


'Til the end of the line

by pigalle



Series: Til the end of the line [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Artist Steve Rogers, Blue Discharge, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Stucky Big Bang 2016, Suicide Attempt, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, reckless fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:18:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 51,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7657099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigalle/pseuds/pigalle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I just want you to be happy,” Bucky whispered after a few moments silence.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“I’m happy with you,” Steve whispered back and embraced Bucky, his arms carefully circling around his waist.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>“I can’t talk you out of this, I tried, but they wouldn’t budge. Bucky, please don’t leave me.”</i></p><p> </p><p> <i>The last part he almost sobbed into Bucky’s hair, having bent down to nuzzle it.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Bucky felt like crying, like breaking down sobbing. He hadn’t meant for it to turn out like this. Steve was supposed to be happy, he wasn’t supposed to be grieving the loss of Bucky.</i></p><p> </p><p>~~~~~</p><p>(Steve and Bucky both loved each other and they knew that, but the war and joining the army wasn't helpful. Bucky saw Peggy and her greatness for Steve, but refused to see anyone but Bucky.)</p><p>Or, what would have happened if Steve and Bucky got together before the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Stucky Big Bang.
> 
> I have had amazing help by the betas (who's had to put up with my chaotic writing style writing this): [tobealone](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tobealone) and kokoryta. This fic wouldn't be what it is without them. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Art to this fic is made by [naomilasenby](http://naomilasenby.tumblr.com/) and you can find it [here on tumblr](http://naomilasenby.tumblr.com/post/149595926184/this-is-my-artwork-for-the-stucky-big-bang-story).
> 
> You can find a spotify playlist with the 'soundtrack'/the music I listened to while writing, [here](https://play.spotify.com/user/jennypigalle/playlist/0ko5AOOsTQGRIMNQyZdywn).

It had been after a game of baseball, the two of them walking home huddled together, when it happened. The May evening had been chilly, and neither of them had thought to bring warmer clothes. Somehow, they had ended up holding hands, telling themselves it was to keep warm. Bucky remembered that that little point of contact, their hands simply touching, had warmed him to the bones, heated up his heart like a flame. He’d focused only on that point of heat, forgetting everything else around him. His world had revolved around Steve’s hand in his.

Even when they reached their apartment they didn’t let go. They kept that intimate closeness between them all the way up to their apartment door. There, Bucky had had to let go of Steve to unlock the door, and instead Steve took his other hand, leaning into Bucky. When they’d gotten inside Steve had unzipped Bucky’s thin coat and closed it around them both, stepping as close to Bucky as he could. He’d put his arms around Bucky and hugged him, hugged him with such fierceness it seemed like they hadn’t seen each other in months. Bucky had leaned into Steve, while Steve tucked his head in under Bucky’s chin, his breath tickling Bucky’s throat.

Bucky didn’t remember how long they stood like that, just that they still hadn’t said anything since they left the game. But somehow, they didn’t need words. They had always been so close that their gestures talked for themselves, sometimes making words excess. After a while, they moved to their couch; Bucky had Steve in his lap, his arms around Steve’s lithe frame as they sat down, huddled into each other. He’d often felt like if he hugged Steve too tight he would break him, but in that moment, he felt like Steve would fly away if he didn’t hold on tight.

Bucky thought it was Steve who instigated it, but it could just as well have been him. But really, what did it matter? What did it matter who instigated it when they finally kissed? Bucky had dreamt of it for years, thought about it in the dark of the night, longed for it when under Steve’s spellbinding gaze. But he had never let it go as far as believing he could actually have it. He’d wanted it, yes, but never had he let himself do it. Steve deserved so much better, so much more than a relationship with another man. Steve deserved the world, and if Bucky could, he would give it to him. Steve deserved happiness, and no matter how much Bucky wished he could be the one to give it to him, he never could. He would never be able to give Steve the perfect white picket fence life. He would never be able to give Steve a stable life with kids and a good job. No matter how much he wished he could, he never would.

Bucky couldn't change a whole world, couldn't suddenly make it approved for two men to love each other. He could wish and hope, but it didn't change the fact that if nothing else, Steve needed to be kept far far away from any thoughts — traces even — of him being queer. With his frail body — something Steve would chew him out about for even thinking — Steve could do with at least some protection from even more people wanting him beaten up — or worse, dead.

It had always been in the back of Bucky’s mind when Steve wanted them to continue. For Steve, he would do anything, even if it was a relationship, a relationship he knew he would have to end before Steve got too invested in it. But despite that, Steve seemed happy. Even when Bucky arranged double dates with two dames, and it weren’t technically him and Steve going together, Steve seemed happy. Even when Bucky forced himself into going out with dames, because Steve wanted him to — dames who complained he only cared for Steve, or broke it off because he didn’t seem interested enough — Steve seemed happy. And when Bucky was shipped of to join the war, Bucky could see that Steve forced himself to be happy, to be happy for Bucky.

~~~~~

"You know, Bucky, you have to understand why I want to fight," Steve said one night when they laid in bed, not long after the US officially had joined the war in Europe.

"I do, Stevie, but-"

"Bucky!" Steve interrupted him, turning around in Bucky's embrace to face him. "They are killing people. People just like you, who haven't done anything wrong! I can't just let them do that, I have to fight."

Bucky sighed. "Stevie, if they captured you they wouldn't exactly let you live either, not with your health problems. And neither for, you know..." He trailed off, leaning down to kiss Steve softly.

"That's just all the more reason for me to fight!" Steve argued when Bucky pulled away from the kiss. "Your religion, who you love, the state of your body that you can't control, it shouldn't matter! You shouldn't be killed because of it!"

"I know, Stevie, I know," Bucky sighed against Steve's lips. "But that doesn't have to mean you need to fight. Try to stay safe, please?" He knew it was a lost cause, but he could at least try.

"Bucky-" Steve began arguing, but Bucky stopped him.

"No, shh, go to sleep."

~~~~~

When he got home Steve wasn't in their apartment. Bucky had been and gotten his order and placement, just two weeks fresh out of basics. Figuring Steve must be out, he went and searched any place he could think of Steve being. He wasn't at the library or the art shop, and Nancie at the pharmacy hadn't seen him either.

Bucky eventually found Steve in an alleyway — which he really wasn't surprised about. There was a big guy standing over him — not surprised by that either — while Steve was sprawled on the ground, two garbage cans tipped over next to him. The guy moved in to punch Steve, but Bucky grabbed him by the back of his shirt, spun him around and punched him square in the jaw. He then kicked him in the butt, sending him scrambling away.

“Pick on somebody your own size!” Bucky yelled after him.

When he turned back around to Steve, he was lifting himself up of the ground. Bucky stretched his hand out to him, even though he knew Steve wouldn’t take it.

“Sometimes I think you like getting punched,” Bucky sighed and bent forward to pick up a piece of paper, trying to make it look like that was his initial intention. He didn’t show it, but sometimes it hurt when Steve refused his help. He knew Steve could do it on his own, but he didn’t have to.

“I had him on the ropes,” Steve said and brushed some dirt from his clothes.

“How many times is this now?” Bucky asked rhetorically when he saw what the paper was. He didn’t have to ask to know how many times Steve had tried to enlist; he knew it like the back of his own hand. To him, it wasn’t how many times Steve had tried to enlist, it was how many times he’d tried to get himself to a sure death.

“Ah, you’re from Paramus now.” When Bucky looked up, Steve was still brushing off his clothes, and he hadn’t looked at Bucky yet. A part of him wanted Steve to not look at him, didn’t want Steve to see the uniform. “You know it’s illegal to lie on the enlistment form. And seriously, Jersey?”

Steve did look up at him, and when he did, he did a double take. Bucky could see the jealousy pass over his face quickly before he composed himself.

“Did you get your orders?” Steve asked.

Bucky really didn’t want to answer that question, he didn’t want to join the war because it meant he would have to leave Steve. With the way Steve walked around always ending up in fights, it was a wonder he wasn’t lying dead in an alley somewhere — and all his illnesses didn’t help.

Bucky looked to the ground briefly, trying to prepare himself to seem proud; Steve didn’t know — and Bucky just couldn’t tell him, not when Steve wanted to join so badly — that he hadn’t enlisted. He’d been drafted. It hadn’t been brought up when he was going to boot camp for training, and he wouldn’t say it now. He took a deep breath and looked back at Steve, holding his head high.

“The 107th. Sergeant James Barnes. Shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.” The words seemed almost mechanical to him, but then again, he had gone over them in his head over a dozen times, just so he’d be able to say them.

“I should be going,” Steve sighed and looked down at his hands.

_ No, you shouldn’t! _ , Bucky wanted to scream at him. Steve should stay safe, and that was nowhere near a war. Bucky needed Steve to stay safe. The only reason he wasn’t trying to refuse his drafting kicking and screaming was because he knew it payed more than any odd job he could get. He could ship the money over to Steve, and Steve could eat healthy, maybe get some art supplies too. He was only doing this for Steve, because all he needed was for him to stay safe.

Bucky cast a quick look over his shoulder, making sure no one was behind them, before he leaned down to give Steve a quick, but longing kiss. He wasn’t so naive that he thought it was a huge possibility that he’d survive the war, and if he didn’t, today was the last day he’d see Steve.

“C’mon, pal, it’s my last night,” Bucky said with a forced smile and slung his right arm over Steve’s shoulders. “Gotta get you cleaned up.”

“Why, where're we going?” Steve asked and shrugged off Bucky’s arm to take the newspaper Bucky held out for him.

“The future.”

He’d seen about the Stark Expo in the paper and known right away that he wanted to go. He’d always been a bit of a nerd for technology; not to mention how much he liked the new medications that were being discovered, because Steve had, at one point or another, had almost every possible sickness.  Bucky was all game for that which could get, and keep, Steve healthy.

“You’re about to be the last eligible man in New York,” Bucky said only half joking as they walked to where they were to meet up their dates. “You know, there’s three and a half million women here.”

He didn’t exactly want to give Steve up, but he was about to go to war and he wasn’t so optimistic that he thought it would be over quickly. No, it would probably end up being years, during which Steve would gradually forget about his feelings for Bucky and settle down with a dame. If he could help Steve live a happy life, he would do it.

“Hell, I’d settle for just one,” Steve replied, setting his gaze on Bucky in a very pointed way. It was the look that meant he thought Bucky was being stupid.

“Well, good thing I took care of that,” Bucky said and looked away, trying not to feel guilty as he waved at the two dames waiting for them. Sometimes he felt like maybe he shouldn’t try setting Steve up with dames, that maybe Steve actually would be happier if he could stay with Bucky.

Steve sighed beside him in that resigned way he did whenever Bucky tried to pair him up. Maybe it was because he’d rather be out with only Bucky, or the fact that none of the dames seemed to pay him any attention. That was the one thing Bucky didn’t understand, why no one was interested in Steve. Often, he had to restrain himself so as to not look at Steve as if he hung the moon. Steve was amazing, everything you could want in a man, although maybe slightly more reckless than what Bucky would have liked.

“What d’you tell her about me?” Steve asked, his tone slightly annoyed.

“Only the good stuff,” Bucky replied and smiled at their dates, even though he wanted to smile at Steve. And really, he’d only told her the good stuff; because with Steve, everything was the good stuff.

“Hello, ladies,” Bucky said when they reached their two dates, flashing a dazzling smile.

Alice gave him a smile back and took his arm, but Patricia seemed to ignore Steve in favour of walking beside Alice. Bucky wasn’t all too thrilled about it, but he pushed it down and pretended like everything was fine.

They walked around the area for a while, looking at everything on display. Bucky kept throwing glances back at Steve who was walking slightly behind them. He didn’t want Steve to feel left out, but he also knew that Steve wouldn’t like to get attention drawn to the fact that his date was ignoring him. After a little while Alice pulled him enthusiastically forward to a stage adorned with a shining red car.

Bucky stared transfixed as a man — Howard Stark — after a presentation, had pushed a button and the car  _ levitated _ . Bucky stared, eyes wide, and with a smile turned to look at Steve, hoping to share his excitement. But when he looked, Steve wasn't there anymore. He only had to look for a minute or so before he found him in a recruitment station.

“C’mon, Steve, we’re gonna go dance,” Bucky pleaded, knowing it was a lost cause trying to get Steve away from there.

“You go ahead, I’ll catch up later,” Steve said and stepped away from Bucky’s hand on his shoulder.

“Are you really going to do this again?” Bucky asked, turning fully towards Steve. He wished he’d stop, that Steve would realise he would be much better off staying home.

“I’m going to try my luck,” Steve replied defiantly, squaring his shoulders the way he did every time Bucky tried to get Steve to understand why he thought it was a bad idea for Steve to join the army.

“As who? Steve from Ohio? Huh?” Bucky was starting to get annoyed. “They’ll catch you. Or worse; they’ll actually take you.”

“Look,” Steve sighed, “I know you don’t think I can do it.”

“Steve, this isn’t a back alley fight. It’s war!” As an afterthought, he added, “I want you to stay safe.”

“I know it’s a war, Bucky.” Steve shifted his stance, stepping closer and locking his gaze with Bucky’s. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Why are you so keen to fighting?” Bucky raised his voice. “There are so many important jobs!”

“What do you want me to do; collect scrap metal-”

Bucky interrupted Steve’s now angry ranting with a determined, “Yes!”

“-in my little red wagon?”

“Why not? Why can’t you do the things that are needed here?” Bucky lowered his voice again and continued, “Not everyone can fight, and you are one of them. Can’t you just try to stay safe?”

“I’m not going to sit in a factory, Bucky!” Steve kept going on his rant, obviously not having noticed the desperation that Bucky was starting to feel. “Bucky, c’mon. There are men laying down their lives, I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand; this isn’t about me.”

“Right,” Bucky said, his annoyed — and scared — sarcasm creeping forward. “Cause you've got nothing to prove!”

A muscle in Steve’s jaw clenched, a sure sign that he was getting really worked up. But Steve didn’t seem to understand that Bucky wanted him safe. And for Steve, that was only far away from the war.

Bucky needed Steve safe for if —  _ when _ — he got back.

Eventually he sighed, not wanting to fight with Steve anymore. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

“How can I?” A small smile played on Steve’s lips, despite how angry he’d just been. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

Bucky shook his head but walked back to Steve — his love for the little punk would be the end of him. He pulled Steve into a brief embrace, trying to ignore the part of his brain that said it might be the last time. He would get back, dammit. Back home to Steve.

“You’re a punk,” he said when he pulled back.

“Jerk. Be careful.”

Bucky smiled, half of it forced. It was war, how careful could he really be?

“Don’t win the war till I get there!”

~~~~~

"Any of you got a gal back home?" Dugan asked the men sitting around the fire. A low murmur settled over the group as several began telling about their gals, but Bucky could feel Dugan's gaze on him. Bucky may be their Sergeant, but he'd never really talked about home with the others in his unit.

"What about you, Sarge, got a gal?"

"No."

"Haven't you found the right person yet?" Dugan asked.

"Something like that." Technically he had, but he wasn't about to tell them his 'gal' was actually his fella.

"So you're living all alone?" Dugan pressed. "I can't imagine you living with your folks."

Bucky sighed but shook his head. "I'm living with my pal, easier with the rent, y'know?" It was, but still not even half of the truth, there was so much more to it, and their relationship was only a small part.

Bucky remembered the day they moved in together; Steve had been 20, and his mother had just died. Getting Steve to agree to move in together had been a real hassle, to the point that Bucky had to play the "it will help me with rent" card. If Steve thought he was helping someone else it was so much easier to get him to do something.

"Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own," Steve had told him.

"The thing is, you don't have to," Bucky had replied and pulled him into a hug. "I'm with you til the end of the line, pal."

Somehow, after that, he'd managed to convince Steve they should move in together. Already, back then, he had loved Steve, and all he wanted to do was make sure he was okay, and take care of him when needed. When Steve still lived with his ma, Bucky could stay calm knowing that she'd take care of him, but now that she was dead he didn't even have that. It wasn't like he could just tell Steve to stay out of fights and to take it easy when he was sick. No, he had to be there to patch him up and force him to stay in bed when he was sick.

“You’re so secretive all the time, Sarge,” Dugan said and thumped his back. “Live a little, tell us ‘bout your life.”

“Well, another time, maybe,” Bucky said as he looked up and saw their commanding officer, saluting him before going to his cot in one of the tents nearby.

~~~~~

Bucky had always thought it was hard to lie to Steve, but the time he'd had to tell him he was going to boot camp for basics training had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He'd had to lie right to his face, had to act like he was happy to go; that he had enlisted, when the cold hard truth lay hidden in his sock drawer. He'd known as soon as he saw the draft letter that he couldn't let Steve know. There'd been excitement but also jealousy in Steve's eyes, and briefly, Bucky could have sworn he'd seen fear.

For as long as he could he had postponed telling Steve, until he couldn't anymore. For over a week he had practised in the mirror, searching for the rights words. But despite the preparation he'd stumbled his way through explaining, and the rest of the day Steve had acted unlike himself; he hadn't responded to Bucky's good-night kiss, and had turned his back to him in bed. Bucky had curled up behind him, wishing he could fix what he'd done wrong.

The next day Steve had demanded to know why Bucky hadn't said anything earlier, Bucky had scrambled through a lie about how he hadn't wanted to antagonise Steve when he knew he wanted to join up too. Steve had accepted it, and after that they had gone back to normal.

Bucky still couldn't get over how much he’d had lie to the one person he loved the most in the world.

~~~~~

"I have a little sister back home," Bucky began, "and my parents of course. And Steve. He's like a brother to me; his ma was like a second mother to me, and my family is like a second family for him. Then his ma died when he was 20 and we were the only family he had left. And... and sometimes I'm scared I'll get back when the war is over and he won't be there anymore, because he's so sickly. Plus he's a stubborn little shit who refuses to rest when he's sick, he has to be forced to lay in bed when he needs it."

He looked up briefly, and saw Dugan and Jones exchanging looks real quick over the campfire.

"So, this friend of yours, what's he do?" Dugan asked, raising his flask with a crooked, bordering on sly, smile.

"He's an artist, the best I've ever seen," Bucky answered with a smile of his own, not bothering about the way Dugan had asked or what it could mean.

"Well, I don't know about that until I have proof."

Bucky reached into his pocket and retrieved a folded up piece of paper. It was thick, of high quality, but slightly frayed on the edges from where Bucky had unfolded it many times. Carefully he did so and showed Dugan and Jones.

"It's my family, that girl there is my sister Rebecca," Bucky said, pointing at her with a fond smile. "He made it just days before I got shipped off, so I'd always be able to see them."

"Wow, he's got talent," Jones commented, his eyes not drifting from the drawing.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, a fond smile slipping past his guard before he could stop it. “He wants to be an artist, but it’s hard for him to get out and paint. He can do it at home, but he doesn’t really have that much to paint there. He does some ad-posters sometimes.”

“Something we could have seen?” Dugan asked.

Bucky shrugged. “Maybe if you’ve been in the right parts of Brooklyn? He designed the menu at a local bakery, and things like that.”

“Hey, with a talent like that, he’ll get a shot eventually,” Jones said.

Bucky hoped so, but if Steve couldn’t even get out of the apartment most of the time… No, Steve’s chance would come.

~~~~~

He’d thought regular war would be terrifying — it was — but when the enemies tanks came, shooting down both their own and the American side, Bucky froze. The tanks were shooting at their own side, threatening them, it didn’t make sense. But the weapons were worse. A momentary blue flash of light and what it hit was gone, like it had never existed. They had no chance to protect themselves, but Bucky still felt like he had failed his men when they were taken prisoners.

~~~~~

"32557038, Sergeant James Barnes."

~~~~~

He knew that Steve liked him, that he was willing to risk a lot for him, but not that he’d go to this extent. What he did was ridiculous, and dangerous, but Bucky loved him for it. Going alone to an enemy base to save hostages was — even though Steve had been so small all the time Bucky had known him — so very much like Steve. It was just the thing you’d expect him to do. What  _ did _ surprise him though was Steve’s new body. So when Steve came and unstrapped him from the table, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I thought you were smaller.” In retrospect, he realised it was quite a ridiculous thing to say, given their situation, because he should have known Steve would respond with, “Have you already forgotten my size?” and grab his ass. Steve would always be Steve.

Terror ripped through him when that guy removed his fucking face, because what if the serum had done the same thing to Steve? That combined with how dazed he still felt meant he didn’t catch much of their talk, and he only half knew what he was doing when he crossed over the explosions far below. Then the beam fell down, with Bucky having just enough time to throw himself to the other side.

Steve wanted to be left behind.   
    “Go, get out of here!”

“No, not without you!” he screamed back desperately, his voice hoarse from wanting to break. He’d just got Steve back, he couldn’t lose him like this. He just couldn’t.

Then Steve leapt across the space, just as the explosions underneath him went off. Bucky stared in terror when the flames engulfed Steve, but just seconds later he came flying out of them, landing onto the edge of the walkway. Bucky grabbed him quickly, his mind set on not letting Steve go. Together they managed to get Steve over the edge, granting themselves a moment to breathe, after falling into a heap on the floor. Bucky didn't let go of Steve's hand.

~~~~~

Bucky felt proud of Steve as they walked back to camp, Steve in the lead with the rest of the soldiers behind them. He was proud that Steve hadn’t let go of his dream of joining the army, even if it was after acquiring a new body. He’d always be proud of Steve, who stood up for what he believed in, who protected those in need.

When they got back to camp, everyone gathered around them, around Steve. Bucky was pushed to the side, and despite his efforts to reach Steve’s side again, he ended up in the back of the group. He looked at Steve for a moment more, watching how he so effortlessly talked to everyone around him. Someone, eager to meet the hero who had brought the soldiers back, pushed into Bucky, making him lose his balance and fall to the ground.

Bucky sighed and stood up, casting one last glance back at Steve. Steve didn’t need him now, and more importantly, he was better off with Bucky keeping his distance. This was where Steve belonged, in the army, fighting the war, and Bucky could ruin it all. He didn’t care if he was sent back, but Steve had worked so long for this. Bucky couldn’t destroy that which Steve had fought his whole life for.

He brushed off a bit of mud from his dirty clothes and made his way to the edge of the camp. It pained him to even have to think about it, but he had to find a way to break up with Steve without hurting him. They couldn’t go on like this, not without it having consequences.

He sat down on a log just where camp ended and the treeline began, leaning forward and dragging his hands through his hair. Even if he didn’t break up with Steve, Steve would have to find someone else after the war was over. Bucky wouldn’t survive it.

It was getting cold by the time Steve sat down beside him. His thin clothes didn’t do much to keep him warm, but he didn’t want to get up. Steve seemed to notice though, and wrapped an arm around him.

“Steve,” Bucky protested, meant for it to come out firm, but it only sounded meek.

“Shh, almost everyone has gone to bed,” Steve replied and pressed a soft kiss to the side of Bucky’s head.

Bucky shivered, and despite himself, leaned into Steve’s warm body. “You’ll be sent home if they find out.”

“They won’t,” Steve murmured against Bucky’s lips.

Bucky halfheartedly tried to move away from Steve’s kiss, but Steve wouldn’t let him.

“It’s okay, Buck.”

~~~~~

When they arrived in London the next day, Steve had a meeting at the SSR, one that Bucky wasn’t allowed in on. Instead, Steve showed him to his room — small, with a bed and a table only, but a door that could be locked — and left him there. There wasn’t much to do in there, so when Steve got back, Bucky was on the bed with his shirt off; he’d finally having decided to change into his uniform for the trip down to a bar later, to celebrate.

Steve raised his eyebrows in question as he closed and locked the door behind him. Bucky raised his uniform shirt, as if that would explain why he was shirtless — as if he  _ had _ to explain to Steve why he was shirtless.

"I... I thought I was never going to see you again," he said after a moment's silence.

“C’mere,” Steve said as he walked towards Bucky, discarding his uniform jacket on the floor. "You're safe now."

Bucky sank into Steve's embrace, hiding his face in the crook of Steve's neck and inhaling his familiar scent. It gave him the pretence that he actually was safe for now.

"I've missed you, Buck," Steve said, his voice hitching. "I was so scared when I heard what had happened. I couldn't... You couldn't be dead."

Steve began moving out of the embrace, but before Bucky could protest, Steve cradled Bucky's head in his hands. "I love you, Buck. I love you so much."

And that, that was something Bucky had no way to top. How was he supposed to show Steve how much he really cared for him when Steve went and said that? Steve had always had a better way with words than he did, had always been able to express his love more fully than Bucky could. Sure, he could flirt, but that was a far cry from expressing your deepest love. The one way Bucky was sure he could show his deep love was with was his actions; kisses, intimacy, cuddling and sex. Whenever he desperately wanted to show Steve how much he cared after he almost lost him, he went with sex — once, he’d even blown Steve in an alley in the middle of the night, after Bucky found him fighting a group of five big men.

So it was only natural that he surged forward and kissed Steve. Steve responded in kind, moving his hands to tightly grip Bucky’s hair while backing him up against the wall.

“Has the serum enhanced every bit of you?” Bucky asked when they took a pause to catch their breath.

When Steve only looked at him in confusion, he slowly moved his hand downwards to cup him through his pants. Steve cracked a smile, but Bucky could see it’s frayed edges.

“Hey,” Bucky said softly, moving his hand to cup Steve’s cheek instead. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you. I want to…”

“Yeah? You want…” Bucky encouraged him.

“I want to marry you, Buck. No, don’t give me that look, I know we can’t. But I  _ want to _ . God, I want it so much. I love you Buck.”

“Hey,” Bucky said, the sound so soft it was barely a whisper, and dried a tear rolling down Steve’s cheek. “I love you, too. So much, Stevie, but we  _ can’t _ . You’re basically famous now, you have to be careful. Maybe before we could have stayed living together, but it will seem suspicious now. Famous Cap, can’t get himself a gal?”

“I know Bucky, but I don’t want that, I want you.”

Steve fell silent and buried his face against Bucky’s neck, and Bucky held him tight, slowly rocking them in place.

~~~~~

Bucky — having let his mind linger too long on the period before Steve found him — went off on his own when they got to the bar, not wanting to ruin the happy mood. He just couldn't get it out of his mind and he knew that if Steve noticed him acting strange, he would ask. Bucky didn't want that, didn't want to worry Steve. How could he ever make Steve worry about him?

The things they'd done... The things they did to Bucky. If there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that he couldn't let them get near him again. If they did... He felt sick just thinking about it.

Bucky took a seat at the bar, ordering a drink right away; he wanted to drink his worries away, forget all about them. Getting drunk felt like a really good idea right then.

He was on his seventh glass, and not feeling the slightest tipsy, when it dawned on him. He couldn't get drunk. All the things they'd done to him, and he couldn't even get drunk to forget about it.

Bucky heard when Steve approached, so used to how his steps sounded that he heard them even in the crowd, the same determined steps he had even before the serum. “See, I told you, they’re all idiots,” he told Steve without turning away from his glass.

“How about you?” Steve asked as he sat down beside Bucky at the bar, “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

“Hell, no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight, I’m following him.” He turned to Steve, a smile on his lips. He’d always follow Steve, wherever he went. He couldn’t leave him again, no matter how much he wanted to leave the war.

“But you’re keeping the outfit, right?” he asked, a sly grin making its way onto his face.

“You know what?” Steve said without taking his eyes off of Bucky, “It’s kind of growing on me.”

And that’s when it all went south, or maybe, it actually went in a good direction. Because, wasn’t this what Bucky had wanted? What he had wanted for Steve?

The music and noise suddenly halted in the other room, and when they looked over, Bucky saw a woman in the doorway. She was beautiful, clad in a bright red dress, and she was staring right at Steve.

"Captain," she said when she came to a halt in front of Steve.

"Agent Carter," he replied, with a look on his face that Bucky couldn't decipher. Did he like her?

"Ma'am," Bucky said, but it fell onto deaf ears.

"Howard has some equipment for you to try. Tomorrow morning?"

It was like she hadn't even noticed Bucky.

"Sounds good," Steve replied, and only then did Bucky realise that he hadn't looked at Bucky at all since Carter walking into the room.

"I see your top squad is prepping for duty." Her eyes hadn't left Steve either.

"You don't like music?" Bucky asked, waiting for her reaction.

"I do actually." She might have heard him, but by the way she was looking at Steve it might as well have been Steve that had asked.

"I might even, when this is all over, go dancing." She smiled as she said it, and Bucky didn't miss the way Steve smiled right back. He actually really liked her.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Bucky asked, and he knew right away from her reaction that this was it.

"The right partner," Carter replied, her gaze looking into Steve's eyes.

He and Steve were over, Steve had his future right there. Right here with Agent Carter was where he belonged.

"You like her," Bucky said to Steve when Carter had walked away.

"Nah, doesn't really matter."

Bucky knew exactly what that actually meant. They really were over.

Steve would be happy with Carter.

It was only later it occurred to him how fitting the song had been —  _ I can no longer stay with you _ . _ I hang my heart on a weeping willow’s tree. _

_ Fare thee well for I must leave thee, do not let this parting grieve thee. _

~~~~~

“You should talk to Carter more.”

Steve lifted his head from Bucky’s chest and gave him the same look he’d had the other times Bucky had said that.

“Bucky…”

“You’ll be happy with her.”

“Bucky, you know I-”

“You can have a normal life with her. Just think about it- you could walk around with her without having to hide that you’re a couple!”

Steve propped himself up on his elbow from his position pressed against Bucky in the small tent. His face was determined, just like it been all the other times Bucky had tried to convince him.

“I don’t need that, Buck,” Steve said softly. “I’m happy with you. If hiding means I can stay with you, I’m happy to do it. I don’t want to lose what we have.”

“Steve, please, you can be happy with her.”

“I wanna be happy with you,” Steve murmured against Bucky’s mouth before fully closing the distance between them.

It was so hard for Bucky to not just melt into it, to give into Steve’s pleading. But he couldn’t; Steve had to understand that Bucky was doing this for him, so that he could have a normal life when the war was over and Bucky wasn’t there for him anymore.

Bucky immediately pulled away from Steve when the tent flap moved and Dum Dum Dugan poked his head in. “Mission’s about to start.”

Steve always tried to stay very close to Bucky whenever the Howling Commandos, and only them, were around — in what Bucky guessed was an attempt to show them that they were together without saying anything, but it might just as well have been to convince Bucky not to leave him — and if they noticed, they didn’t say anything. Not even when they found Steve and Bucky in just as compromising positions as now.

~~~~~

Steve’s room at the SSR base was a decent walk away from the barracks where Bucky slept with the rest of their little unit. It was late, not nearly when they were supposed to be back in their designated places, but late enough that Bucky wasn’t exactly supposed to be walking around this far inside the base. No one had stopped him so far, but there was nothing that said he couldn’t be. And what would he tell them he was doing, going to see Steve? He couldn’t tell them anything that couldn’t wait for the morning, he didn’t have anything mission related to talk to Steve about.

When he rounded a corner he let out a sigh. Agent Carter was walking towards him, which meant he was most likely soon on his way back, without getting to see Steve.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she said in greeting and came to a stop.

Bucky swallowed a resigned sigh and greeted her back, “Agent Carter.”

Normally he’d have no problem talking to her, but the knowledge of how much Steve liked her, coupled with how he hadn’t really been his old self since he got back, made that he didn’t know what to say to her.

“What, pray tell, are you doing wandering around this late?”

“I was just,” Bucky began, knowing it was a lost cause, “I was just going to see Steve.”

“Ah, Captain Rogers,” she said with a smile. “Do you mind if I accompany you there?”

“I will- what?” Bucky did a double take, she wasn’t going to send him back to the barracks?

“I assume that would be of no trouble?”

“No, no of course not,” Bucky said and shook his head at himself. She was going to let him see Steve.

“How long have you been friends, if you don’t mind me asking?” Carter asked as they began walking.

“No, not at all,” Bucky smiled. “A long time, almost as long as I’ve had a sister. Becca can’t have been more than a year at most when I met Steve. I was six, I think, Steve must have been five.”

“That is a very long time.”

“Yes, he and his ma became my second family, and when she died, Steve became a part of mine.”

“How wonderful to have such a strong friendship.”

“It really is, tough, more times than I can or will count we’ve almost lost it.” Bucky trailed off, uncertain if it was really something discuss with Carter.

“Because of his health, I presume?” she asked, deciding for him.

“That, and him getting into fights. I always had to step in and save him, even though he didn’t like it. But he always fought for the right reasons, so I never really stopped him, I helped him instead. And God did he need it.”

“It is wonderful that he has you,” she said, and for the first time she smiled directly at him, with warmth playing in her eyes.

She turned from him and rapped her knuckles on a door. Steve’s door, Bucky realised when he looked around him; he hadn’t realised they’d already gotten there.

“Bucky,” Steve said with smile in his voice when he opened the door. When he saw Carter he added a surprised, “Agent Carter.”

“Captain Rogers,” she responded, her mouth and eyes all smile and warmth.

“Did…” Steve began, but Carter interrupted him.

“No no, I was just accompanying Sergeant Barnes.” Then she took her leave, Steve looking after her.

She liked Steve, Bucky realised as he stepped inside Steve’s room. She liked him very much, just as Steve liked her very much. He had seen something in Carter's gaze as she looked at Steve, something that he knew was in his gaze whenever he looked at Steve.

~~~~~

“Here,” Bucky said, just before they were going off for another mission. “I want you to have this.”

It was a small compass, like a berlock, with place for a small photo. He’d put a photo of Agent Carter in there, trying once again to get Steve to agree with ending their relationship. Bucky was running out of ideas how to do it.

“Bucky,” Steve sighed when he saw the inside of it.

“You can be happy,” Bucky tried once again, “you deserve to be happy.”

“I  _ am _ happy, Bucky.”

~~~~~

Sometimes, in between missions and fighting, they'd find themselves in the countryside, in a village or a bigger city, like now. It was mostly Dum Dum who came with the suggestions, and this once was no exception. Except instead of a bar, he'd found a brothel. Bucky could both see and sense the righteousness radiating off of Steve. He'd never liked that sort of places, and more times than Bucky could count he'd ranted about the injustice the girls at brothels were faced with.

The guys liked the idea, so to the brothel they went. Maybe, maybe Bucky could work with this.

Steve trailed after Bucky when they'd gotten inside, doing the complete opposite of what Dum Dum did.

"You've never wondered what it's like?" Bucky whispered in Steve's ear when he leaned towards him to hand him a glass of alcohol.

"Bucky," Steve protested.

"Never wanted to do it with a woman?"

"I'm leaving," Steve announced — unnecessary when no one but Bucky heard him — and stood up. "You can come with me, but maybe you'd rather stay here."

Bucky was so taken aback he couldn't even get his arm to reach for Steve before he was gone. Steve was mad, furious even. Steve couldn't really be that angry with him, could he?

Bucky was up and rushing his way through the crowd after Steve before he couldn't even think through what he was doing.

"Steve!" Bucky shouted when he caught up with Steve, halfway back to camp.

Steve ignored him.

"Steve," Bucky said again, jogging to keep up with Steve's quick stride, "are you mad at me?"

Steve resolutely didn't answer.

"Fine, you're mad at me, I shouldn't be so surprised. But you do know that I wouldn't betray your trust like that? I'd never sleep with one of them when I'm with you."

"Then why did you try to make me do it?" Steve growled, spinning around to come face to face with Bucky.

"I just-"

"Can't you stop this, Bucky," Steve pleaded, his voice suddenly raw. "Can't you let me be with you for as long as I want to?"

"What about when you don't want to? What about when you really realize what you feel for Carter? What will I do then?"

"We'll figure that out when — if — it comes to it."

But by then, Bucky might already be too invested in this relationship to handle seeing it broken up. He couldn't let that happen.

~~~~~

Bucky was getting desperate, and this was the only idea he could come up with now. Because if it didn’t make Steve see reason, Bucky wouldn’t be left anywhere close to Steve anymore. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but what other choice did he have? Steve didn’t accept a simple break up. Steve would be fine without him, or at least he’d learn to be — just as he’d need whatever happened next. But Carter, she could help Steve with that, help him deal with a world without Bucky in it.

Carter and Steve were right for each other, it was so obvious in the way they acted around each other. Bucky had at first thought Carter maybe only liked Steve because of the serum, but he’d soon realised that it was nothing like that; she liked the man he was even before the serum. The way she’d sometimes gaze at him when he couldn’t see made Bucky feel… uneasy and jealous, because it was so obvious how much she liked Steve. And in the end, she would be so much better for Steve than Bucky ever could be.

And Steve, Steve had never been really good at interacting with women, but with Carter it went as smooth as water, like he was born to talk to her. Sure, he was just as comfortable with Bucky, but it just wasn’t the same thing. So Bucky was hellbent on going through with his plan.

He stalked up to the man, not exactly sure who he was but not caring; if this was going to end like he wanted, he had to time it perfectly and Steve was only a bit behind him. Without wasting another second, he grabbed the front of the man’s uniform and pulled him close to him. If he was lucky, the man would be homophobic enough for this to work out.

The disgusted gasp as the man threw himself back from the kiss, at the same time Steve yelled “Bucky!” behind them, was proof enough.

“You— you freak!” The man said, at the same time Steve caught up to them and asked, “What the hell are you doing, Bucky?”

Bucky looked at the man as he ran away — probably to tell someone of what Bucky had done — not wanting to meet Steve’s glare. He took a step to walk away, but was stopped when Steve gripped his elbow.

“Bucky, what are you doing? They’re gonna throw you out now, what were you thinking?” He lowered his vice and added, “Why would you kiss someone else, Buck?”

“You don’t get it, do you, Steve?” Bucky asked and turned towards him, flinching at the angry look on Steve’s face. “I’m trying so hard to make you see that you would be so much better off with Carter, or just any other  _ woman _ . Why can’t you just accept that? Why can’t you accept that I’m breaking this off with you?”

A look of hurt flashed over Steve’s eyes before the anger came back stronger. His jaw was set tight, and he straightened his spine out, making him tower a few more inches above Bucky. All in all, it was quite scary.

“You can’t singlehandedly decide what is best for me, James.”

Bucky flinched at the use of his birth name; Steve only ever used it if he was  _ very _ mad at Bucky. He deserved it, and if Steve getting angry at him helped, then he’d gladly anger him more.

“Well, I’m breaking up with you, go be happy with Carter. I can  _ see _ that you like her, Steve! Back at the bar, you didn't take your eyes off her,  _ only _ her. Don’t tell me that you didn’t forget about me, because you did!”

He hadn’t meant to show the hurt in his voice; but he was getting worked up, and seeing how easy Steve could forget completely about him had actually hurt. And now that Steve was well liked, famous and all, he was bound to get noticed by beautiful dames that would make him forget about Bucky. Just as much as he tried to give Steve a happy life, he also tried to avoid himself getting hurt in the process of doing that.

Steve narrowed his eyes, as if thinking the hurt was faked to get his point through better, and Bucky felt like something snapped in his chest, the air closing in around him. Before Steve could say anything, he stormed off, not wanting Steve to see the tears welling up in his eyes.

He stumbled back to where he, Steve and the rest of the Howling Commandos had their tents put up. He hadn’t meant for his plan to come to this, but he probably should have known it would backfire on him. Of course Steve had to be his stubborn little shit self and not see what Bucky was trying to do for him.

Monty, Jim, Dernier, Gabe and Dum Dum all sat around the campfire, and looked up when they heard Bucky approaching; Bucky would have prefered them not seeing him in this state.

“What’s happened?” Dum Dum asked and stood up.

Bucky turned away from them — not wanting them to see the tears running down his cheeks — and heard Steve behind him calling, “Bucky, I’m not done with you!”

Bucky sighed deeply. He just wanted to be alone.

“Are you— are you two actually fighting?” Gabe asked, as if the idea of them fighting was ridiculous.

Before Bucky could answer, Steve reached them, roughly turning Bucky around so he was facing him. “I don’t think you really understand it, Bucky, but that shit you just pulled is going to get you sent home! And not just in a leaving the war way. All the benefits of your service- they’ll be gone! And how did you plan to get a job? You could go to jail!”

The accusatory tone made Bucky flinch. Of course he’d thought about it, the only problem with that was, he wasn’t going to live for much longer. Even if he got sent back home, Hydra would be able to find him anywhere in the world. And he couldn’t let that happen. So what did it matter that he  _ maybe _ could be thrown into jail? But if Hydra still managed to find him, surely they wouldn’t want him when he’d gotten a blue discharge?

“What, exactly, are you talking about? You don’t mean…” Monty started saying.

“Barnes!” Colonel Phillips voice reach them from across the field, the fierceness and anger no less hearable from the distance.

“What did you do?” Dum Dum asked, glancing between Bucky and Steve, and then to Colonel Phillips approaching them with determined steps.

“The board of officers want to see you for a screening. Now.” Colonel Phillips’ voice was hard, leaving no room for protests.

Bucky cast one last look on Steve before he followed Colonel Phillips, knowing well enough what would happen to him. He just didn’t care.

~~~~~

Bucky wasn't exactly sure what he should have been expecting, but whatever it was, it was nothing like the real thing. The psychiatrist asked some highly invasive, personal questions about him and his sex life while the board of officers sat there listening in.

They had tried to make him spill information about more queer soldiers, but he'd blankly refused. Not only because he only knew of Steve — and he would never drag him into this — but he wouldn't just out someone like that. He'd never tell, and it wasn't like they could threaten him with anything. There was nothing left for him to lose.

When the questioning was over, they sent him to an isolation tent, probably to keep his queer self away from the others. They didn't exactly tell him anything about how it went, but Bucky could guess how it would go; he'd get a blue discharge and get sent away.

While he would miss Steve, the separation would be good for him. He'd realise that having a relationship with Bucky wasn't a good idea, and hopefully pursue Agent Carter.

Bucky just wanted to know Steve was happy before he disappeared.

~~~~~

"I just want to talk to him."

Steve's voice filtered into the tent just as Bucky was about to lay down on the bunk bed.

A few hours had gone by since the screening, and the only thing Bucky had been told was that tomorrow he'd be shipped away. Exactly where had been unspecified, and Colonel Phillips didn't offer any answers when Bucky had asked; he had even been denied being able to see Steve one last time.

Because Bucky was 100 percent certain it would be the last time.

Instead, he would be shipped off, leaving Steve with their fight as his last memory of Bucky.

Steve must have manage to talk whoever was outside into getting to see him, because the next moment he walked into the tent.

"Buck." Steve's tone made Bucky's heart break. It was like all the sadness a human could feel was somehow poured into that one word.

"We've gotten a new mission," Steve continued. "We're leaving tomorrow."

Steve walked up to Bucky and sat down beside him on the bunk. "I don't want to leave without you, but they won't let you come along. Bucky, why did you have to do this?"

"I just want you to be happy," Bucky whispered after a few moments silence.

"I'm happy with you," Steve whispered back and embraced Bucky, his arms carefully circling around his waist.

"I can't get you out of this, I tried, but they wouldn't budge. Bucky, please don't leave me."

The last part he almost sobbed into Bucky's hair, having bent down to nuzzle it.

Bucky felt like crying, like breaking down sobbing. He hadn't meant for it to turn out like this. Steve was supposed to be happy, he wasn't supposed to be grieving the loss of Bucky. He didn't even want to think about how Steve would react later when he found out Bucky was dead.

Because he would find that out soon enough. Bucky had to die, because HYDRA couldn't find him. They'd just continue what they had started, the experiments, the manipulation, the changes to his body. It wasn't something he could experience again. And he wouldn't, not as long as he had anything to say about it.

"I need to go," Steve eventually sighed. "I could only come in here for a limited time, and they almost didn't even allow me that."

Bucky gave Steve one last forced smile as a goodbye before Steve walked out.

~~~~~

The next morning found Bucky sneaking out of the tent, going to get his gear and sneaking into the mission transport. He'd been left only to think when Steve had left last night, and as it was right now, he couldn't leave Steve alone on this mission so soon after all this had happened. It didn't matter that the rest of the Howling Commandos would be on the mission, Bucky still saw Steve as alone if he wasn't there.

He hid amongst the provisions in the plane, waiting until he heard them getting on and the plane started. Knowing there was no risk of anyone finding him, he sat down and relaxed, it would probably be a long ride.

He must have dozed off, because a particularly rough bit of turbulence caused his head to bounce against the metal hull and he sat bolt upright. He swore silently and rubbed at the sore spot; no one seemed to have heard him, but he noticed the plane was descending. Guess they were almost there then. Wherever there was.

He scrambled for something to hold on to as the plane shook again. No wonder they were usually strapped up when in these. While the provisions were strapped in place and stayed still, that was more than you could say about Bucky. At one point his rifle almost slipped away, and another he slid all the way to the other side of the plane and hit his head once again. To say he was happy when the plane finally came to a stop on the ground was an understatement.

The last hit to his head was particularly hard and made him feel slightly dizzy, almost falling over when he tried to stand up. He could hear talking outside the plane, and panicked slightly. If there was anyone other than Steve who saw him before the plane took off again, he sure as hell would be sent back. He couldn’t let that happen.

When the loading ramp opened, he hid behind a crate, hoping that, if it wasn’t Steve, the person wouldn’t find him. Footsteps — the sound made fuzzy by his dizziness — moved over the floor and came to a stop just a few feet from his hiding spot. He held his breath, trying to stay as silent as possible.

The footsteps moved again, coming closer to him. The first thing he saw was a pair of boots as they came to a stop just in front of him. Slowly, he slid his eyes up the person’s body until his gaze came to a stop on Steve’s angry face.

“Bucky, what are you doing here?”

He sighed and stood up shakily. “Couldn’t leave you all alone,” he eventually murmured, barely audible.

“I’m not all alone, Buck,” Steve said softly and stepped closer to him. “Are you okay, though? You look like you’re gonna fall any second.”

“‘M fine, just hit my head.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve sighed and embraced him, softly pulling Bucky to his chest and giving his forehead a quick kiss.

When he pulled back he studied Bucky closely, searching every inch of his face. He frowned and lifted a finger to his lips, wet it with his tongue and moved it to a spot just below Bucky’s temple. He swiped it over the skin, and when it came back into Bucky’s view there was a small smudge of blood on the tip of the finger.

Steve opened his mouth and was about to say something just as: “Cap, what are you doing in there?” filtered in from just outside the plane.

Bucky shied away from Steve’s embrace and hid in the shadows. He didn’t want to get Steve into trouble. Steve, though, reached his arm out for Bucky, a pleading look on his face.

“Since you’re here, please come Bucky,” Steve said in a soft tone. “It’s just the Commandos out there, they won’t send you back. I’m their Captain. I won’t let them take you away.”

Bucky reluctantly stepped forward, but didn’t take his hand. Certain safety measures still had to be taken. Instead, he looked at Steve’s hand with his eyebrows raised, a silent question to what Steve was thinking. Steve seemed to remember and retracted his hand with his lips soundlessly forming an o.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said and looked so sad Bucky almost regretted it. But he had to stay away so that Steve could keep his position.

When they walked out Bucky walked slightly behind Steve, like that would make it easier to hide or run away if he had to.

Bucky was slightly surprised to see the snow covered mountains, but quickly hid it; he couldn’t show that he had no idea what the mission was. Steve led Bucky away from the plane, to a small patch of trees a little bit away. Jim and Monty were already there, setting up a tent and equipment. They looked up at the footsteps heard in the snow, and both looked confused when their gazes fell on Bucky.

"Where did..." Monty began but trailed off.

"I snuck on the plane, Steve had nothing to do with it," Bucky hurried to explain before they thought it was another one Steve’s stupid plans. Steve couldn't get in trouble because of him.

“I’d just like to know,” came a vice from behind and then Gabe came into Bucky’s view, “why you weren’t supposed to be on this mission from the start? And I want to hear it from you, not what Colonel Phillips said was the reason.”

Bucky sighed and sat down beside Steve on a log at the growing campfire. “I got the blue discharge.” He knew they would know what that meant, and as long they didn’t connect that to Steve he didn’t care if they knew he was queer.

“What about Steve?” Dum Dum asked and sat down with them, Dernier following suit.

“What about him?” Bucky asked carefully, hoping that Steve would refrain from saying something to screw this up.

“I’m guessing he didn’t get one since he’s out here with us, so how were you found out?”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asked, starting to get confused. He really didn’t understand what they were talking about.

“I hope you two realise that we are neither blind nor stupid,” Dum Dum said and leaned forward, supporting his elbows on his knees. “Only the way Bucky talks about you, Steve, would have been enough for us to know you are together — and we don’t care as long as that’s what you want to be, and you’re happy. God knows you deserve that after all this.”

Steve seemed just as surprised as he was. Had they known this whole time? Without saying anything? The knowledge made him almost want to scoot closer to Steve, but he had to firmly stay at a distance to Steve. Because Steve needed to let him go and approach something with Agent Carter. She was right for him, would love him like he deserved; she probably already did, if Bucky's eyes hadn't started failing him.

“Buck,” Steve said in a low tone and turned to him, his hand raising as if wanting to touch Bucky, “can’t you see that you don’t have to do all this? I don’t care what everyone thinks, it’s you who matters.”

“It’s not!” Bucky moved to the end of the log, his eyes locked on Steve. “I don’t matter, not in this equation! But you do, and I have to do this, Stevie. This is my choice.”

He’d forgotten about the others until he stood up to escape to the tents. They were all looking at him and Steve, eyebrows hunched up in frowns.

“Trouble in paradise?” he heard Dum Dum ask as the tent flap fell closed behind him.

He had to try and figure out the mission at the same time staying away from Steve. If he kept his distance now, it would hurt less for Steve when Bucky eventually died. He knew he had to do it, one way or another. While Steve thought he could protect everyone, he couldn’t this time.

~~~~~

Around the time Bucky thought about going to sleep — dark had fallen outside the tent, and the others’ voices had dimmed down to a murmur — the tent flap moved, making Bucky freeze up. He didn’t particularly want to have a confrontation with Steve right now, not when the others could clearly hear. But it turned out to only be Gabe.

“I thought I might fill you in on the mission,” he said and sat down, careful of giving Bucky the personal space he obviously wanted. “There has been information that Zola might be on a train that’s going to pass by here. We are to try and board it to capture him.” Gabe smiled faintly and sighed. “Really, it’s somewhat of a suicide mission. Jumping on a moving train, who do they think we are? We don’t all have Cap’s super serum.”

Bucky’s attention jumped at “suicide mission”. If it was thought to be extra dangerous, if he died, it wouldn’t be seen as particularly weird. And, even if he got through this mission alive, there would be no more missions for him. Not when he would obviously be found when they were to be brought back or taken to another mission.

He only gave the other man faint attention from there onwards; by the way Gabe trailed off and nodded stiffly before leaving the tent he must have noticed. While Bucky felt moderately bad at treating someone he classified as a friend with such bad manners, he was too deep in thought. He was prepared to die, had been for a while, but he just hadn’t thought it would come this soon. Leaving Steve with the two of them in a fight wasn’t how he ideally wanted it, but he saw no other outcome. He had to get Steve to distance himself from Bucky.

~~~~~

So maybe heights weren’t one of his favourite things. The gap of the ravine, the distance to the railway brought no reassurance to the whole thing. Maybe being paranoid like this when he was determined to die was just ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. He was sure no man was reasonable in face of death.

“Remember when I made you ride The Cyclone at Coney Island?”

Steve turned from where he had gazed out over the ravine, to look at Bucky. “Yeah, and I threw up?”

“This isn’t payback, is it?” Bucky asked, a tentative smile directed at nobody in particular.

“Now why would I do that?” Steve’s look was far too intimate, to full of emotion, for Bucky to feel fully comfortable. He wanted Steve to distance himself, damn it.

“We were right, Zola’s on the train,” Gabe said and looked up at the others from where he and Jim had been listening to the radio. “Hydra dispatches gave him permission to open up the throttle. Wherever he’s going, they must need him bad.”

Beside Bucky, Monty lowered his binoculars and said, “Let’s get going because they’re moving like the devil.”

All too suddenly, it was so very real to Bucky. He was really doing this. He was going to jump on a train, and before this mission was over, he would be dead.

He followed after Steve as if in haze, shot at the Hydra agents in haze, took the gun Steve offered when Bucky had run out of bullet, also in haze, and was only snapped out of it when the force of the shot against Steve’s shield sent him out of the train. It was only a reflex of survival that made him grab onto the bar. He could see it starting to come loose from the wall, and he was gripped by the sudden intense need of  _ not dying _ . It was what made him reach his hand out to Steve when he climbed out.

It was Steve’s, “Hang on, grab my hand!” that brought everything back into focus.

“No!” he screamed back to Steve. “Go be happy with Carter, you deserve her!”

Steve stared at him, the look on his face almost breaking Bucky’s resolve. But no, he had to do this.

“This is the end of the line!” he yelled out to Steve and let go of the bar. The bar fell with him, as did Steve’s cry and desperate attempt to reach him. But he was already falling, and now everything would work out the way they were supposed to. The thought made him smile, and then everything was gone around him.

~~~~~

"32557038."

~~~~~

"32557...038..."

~~~~~

3255...7...0..."

~~~~~

"325...5...7...

~~~~~

"325..."

~~~~~

"..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'd give Steve a song as a character soundtrack, for this fic it would probably be _I saw you die_ by Apollo Drive.

Steve was still hanging on to the bar, staring out at the snowy mountains, when the train came to a stop later. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, only that he still couldn’t believe that Bucky had fallen, that Bucky had died. He distantly registered that someone was at the hole that had been blown out, that someone was pulling him back into the train, to safety. Just as distantly he went through the motions of boarding the plane that took him back to base. He thought maybe he had explained to someone what had happened, or had he imagined that? He could still see Bucky’s falling body in front of his eyes, like a layer above the real world. He was sure he must have given a mission report when he came back to the SSR base, but he had no idea what he had written on it.

~~~~~

Bucky falling, again and again. Repeated words:  _ end of the line _ . His desperate attempt to reach Bucky.

It replayed in his head over and over, and he filled his glass for at least the tenth time. He couldn’t feel a damn thing, no tingle or dizziness that would indicate that he was even a little tipsy. No, he was as sober as he’d been when he walked into the bombed out bar.

His feelings, on the other hand, were not keeping quiet, although he wished they could be. Grief was screaming inside his heart, trying to ignite a spark of rage, but it was drowned out every time by the memory of Bucky falling before he could reach him, slipping away mere inches from his fingers. A tear spilled down his cheeks, he wanted to be angry at Bucky for leaving him like that, but he couldn’t. How could he be angry when Bucky had  _ willingly _ let himself fall?

He just didn’t understand why he did it.

Steve refilled his glass again, heard footsteps he instinctively knew belonged to Peggy.

“Dr. Erskine said that the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells. Create a protective system of regeneration and healing. Which means, um...I can't get drunk. Did you know that?” He looked up at Peggy, not caring how pathetically his voice broke. He couldn’t bother to seem mature.  _ Bucky was dead _ .

“Your metabolism burns four times faster than the average person. He thought it could be one of the side effects,” Peggy responded, righting a chair to sit down with Steve. She gave him a sad smile, and he fought to keep in a sob.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said in a softer tone, leaning a little closer to him.

He screwed his eyes shut, willing the tears to stop. It didn’t succeed.

“Did you read the report?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know that’s not true,” he said, looking anywhere but at her. His voice was unsteady no matter what he did, and his tears refused to stop. How could anyone think he was strong? Bucky dying broke him.

Another sob racked through his body.  _ Bucky was dead! _

“You did everything you could. Did you believe in your friend? Did you respect him?” Her way of tentatively saying friend made him look up, and what he saw in her face made him certain. She knew. She smiled sadly when his only response was a look.

“Then stop blaming yourself. Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it.”

The thing was, no one knew that Bucky had let go, that it was his choice to fall. He had barely been able to retell what had happened, and that detail was still so painful to him, he couldn’t bear saying it out loud. He just couldn’t.

He downed the rest in his glass and dragged a hand over his eyes. “I'm goin' after Schmidt. I'm not gonna stop ‘til all of Hydra is dead or captured.”

Maybe Bucky had let go willingly, but he still blamed Hydra for Bucky being there in the first place. He wouldn’t let it happen to anyone else because of those scums.

“You won’t be alone.”

~~~~~

_ Bucky was dead! _

~~~~~

He tried what Bucky had told him, had kissed Peggy before jumping aboard the plane, but deep in his heart he knew it was fruitless even though he cared deeply for her. Maybe under other circumstances he would have actually loved her. But now he had only one thing circling in his mind, one person, and one heartbreaking phrase.  _ Bucky was dead. _

Shaking, he sat down in the chair and called over the radio. He didn’t know how to fly a plane, and in the speed it was currently going, there was nothing he could do. He knew, and he was at peace with that. In hindsight, he had probably been since Bucky fell.

“Schmidt’s dead,” he said when the line connected, he was tired and his voice had no real bite to it.

“What about the plane?” Peggy asked over the line.

“It’s… it’s a bit harder to explain,” Steve answered.

“Give me your coordinates, I’ll find you a safe landing site.”

“It’s not going to— There won’t be a safe landing. But I can force it down.”

“I’ll get Howard on the line, he’ll know what to do.” Steve couldn’t be sure with the crackling line, but he thought Peggy’s voice wavered.

“There's not enough time. This thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York.” Softer, he added, “I gotta put her in the water.”

“Please, Steve, don’t do this.” The line cracked, he couldn’t be sure if he heard the sniff or not. “We have time, we can work it out.”

“Right now I'm in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer a lot of people are gonna die.” He was determined now. He’d made his choice and he had to go through with it. “Peggy, this is my choice.” He could save people, prevent a catastrophe. This way, he was the only one that would die, and that wouldn’t really matter to the world, would it? He was just a boy from Brooklyn. The world could do without him.

“Steve?”

“I’m here.” He sighed, knowing what would happen. “I’m gonna need a raincheck on that dance.”

“Alright,” Peggy said, and this time Steve was sure he could hear her voice breaking. “A week, next Saturday, at the Stork club.”

“You got it,” Steve said with a sad smile even though she couldn’t see it.

“Eight o’clock on the dot. Don’t you dare be late, understood?”

Steve laughed, a short and sad sound. “You know, I still don’t know how to dance.”

“I’ll show you, just be there.”

The radio crackled once again, almost drowning out Peggy’s sob. As the ice came closer and closer, the line shut down with a last crackle. Steve took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Whatever happened next he didn’t want to see it.

“I’m coming, Buck.”

(He thought maybe he understood why Bucky did it.)


	3. Chapter 3

“ _ Curveball, high and outside for ball one. So the Dodgers are tied, 4-4. _ ”

Steve woke up feeling… weird. His head felt like it had someone pounding on it, and his muscles were sore as if he hadn’t used them in ages. On instinct he reached out his hand to feel for Bucky in the too soft bed he was for some reason lying in. When his hand met nothing but air, he opened his eyes, for the first time taking notice of the sounds from a radio.

“ _ Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets field. _ ”

He slowly looked around the room, seeing nothing more than unfamiliarity. It was clean, too clean, after all the time he’d served during the war, after all the mud and blood.

“ _ The Phillies have managed to tie it up to 4-4. But the Dodger have three men on. _ ”

_ Bucky was dead. _

Slowly — his muscles taking long time to respond — he sat up. He could remember Bucky, remember how he … fell from the train. There was a plane. And ice.

“ _ Pete leans in. Here’s the pitch. Swung on. A line to the right. And it gets past Rizzo. _ ”

Those words… He looked around to the radio, taking in the cheering coming from it. It sounded familiar, like he’d heard it somewhere else. But…

“ _ Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third. Durocher’s going to wave him in. Here comes the relay, but they won’t get him. _ ”

Something wasn’t right.

The plane, he had crashed it into the ice, and he died, didn't he? So what was all this, why was he feeling like this?

A door opening made him look up. A woman walked in, her dark curly hair flowing down to her shoulders. She wore a broad tie, and her loose shirt failed to hide the hard lines of what must have been her bra. Something wasn’t right.

He  _ was _ dead, wasn't he? Like Bucky was.

_ Bucky was dead. _

“Good morning,” she said and closed the door behind her. Looking down at a wrist watch, she added, “Or should I say afternoon?”

“Where am I?” Steve asked, because something really wasn’t right.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

“ _ The Dodgers take the lead 8-4. Oh, Dodgers! Everyone is on their feet. What a game we have here today, folks. What a game indeed. _ ”

Those words, the scene that played out in front of him at them. He looked to the radio, as if that could verify his thoughts. He knew that game, knew it with clarity.

Something definitely was wrong.

“Where am I really?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The game. It’s from May, 1941. I know ‘cause I was there.”  _ And your clothes, they’re all wrong, your hair, too. _

Steve stood up slowly. That game, after that game, he and Bucky… He knew that game like it was yesterday, even more so what happened afterwards. He wouldn’t forget that.

He would never forget the best day of his life.

“Now, I’m gonna ask you again,” he said and took a few steps towards her. “Where am I?”

Something red flashed in her hand and she began saying, “Captain Rogers…”

“Who are you?” he demanded, squaring his shoulders.

Right at that moment, the door opened, showing two men in full gear. Steve stiffened, ready to fight. They came towards him, grabbing for him, trying to catch him, but he caught them and threw them off. They hit one of the walls, broke right through it and into the room on the other side. Steve followed, seeing his escape, and ran over the broken shards of the wall. The room on the other side was dull, gray, dirt-white plates covering the walls. Wherever it was, Steve wasn't dead.

_ He was alive, but Bucky was dead. _

He ran for the doors, slammed them open and ran into a hallway. The wall opposite him was covered in windows looking out to a street, a street where all sort of strange cars flashed by.

He looked around, saw the suit clad men and women. Over a soundsystem the woman's voice said, "All agents code thirteen," and the men and women turned to look at him.

Steve set of running, not wasting a second to wonder at the strange things around him. He pushed away a man who tried to grab him, rushed to the doors. They wouldn't get him.

He ran out the door, darting around a few pedestrians, and rushed straight into the street. Narrowly avoiding getting hit by said strange cars, he took of running again, down the street and away from the ones chasing him.

He stopped at a big plaza, slowly turning to take in the many screens covering the buildings lining the streets. It wasn't like anything he'd seen before, the screens showing what seemed to be adverts and commercials of all kinds, all in colour.

He didn't notice the black cars until they had him completely surrounded.

"At ease, Soldier."

Steve turned around, looking to a man clad from head to toe in black, a black eyepatch covering his left eye. He came to a halt a few steps in front of Steve.

"Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly."

"Break what?" Steve asked, breathing heavily — not because of the run, but because of panic from how  _ wrong _ the world was.

"You've been asleep, Cap." The man took a pause, as if to draw out some sort of suspension. "For almost 70 years."

No. That couldn't be. Everything he knew, everyone he cared about... The crash, it should have killed him, should have reunited him with Bucky. And if not the crash, the ice should have taken him out. Instead, it left him here in a world where nothing was the same, where he knew nothing and no one.

"You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah," Steve said, took a deep breath. "Yeah, I just..."

_ No. _

He wasn't fine, didn't feel like he would be fine. He was still alive — in a world where he knew nothing — and Bucky...

_ Bucky was dead. _

~~~~~

They sent him to a cabin, The Retreat, they called it. Said he could get used to the world there, learn how it worked. Get used to being alone rather, because that was the only thing he really needed to learn.

~~~~~

It took him only a few days not to be woken up at every sound he heard, to not wake up being ready to fight each morning. But getting used to waking up without Bucky, of realising he was dead, it took more than a week before he stopped breaking down every time he realised. After that, it was just sadness that washed over his heart like a wave crashing in over the shore, but he could manage, could get out of bed.

And after that, he only needed a few days to catch up with the world, grasp the major ways the world had changed. After everything he’d gone through, it wasn’t that hard to take in. (Though, he had to admit, he was kind of disappointed that Starks flying cars weren't in use yet.)

Although he was alone in the cabin, he felt watched; but most importantly, he felt caged. The fence around was clearly made to keep something strong in, and he didn't like it one bit.

Just two weeks after he had apparently been thawed out of the ice, he had an apartment in New York. It felt better than the cabin, although — regardless of how many people he was surrounded by — he felt no less lonely.

It wasn't until Fury gave him the files that he realised some of his old friends might still be alive.

He watched the video — a newsreel of the war —  Fury had also given him, but he didn’t want to see what people had made out of him, how they viewed him, or how much of a hero they saw him as. Perhaps it was supposed to heighten people’s spirits, to give them hope they could win the war, but to Steve... To Steve it was just a big, painful reminder of the times he’d left behind, of the times that were gone and never would come back, of friendships he’d lost; and of Bucky.

He didn’t want to see a movie made to show him like a big hero when it only reminded him of how small and lonely he was now.

He clicked the video shut, not wanting to see another second. But, he’d been stalling with the video. Fury had given him the files of all the Howling Commandos; and while Steve knew it was reasonable to believe they were all dead, he didn’t want to see the confirmation in black and white. But he picked up the files and started reading.

_ Dugan, Timothy “Dum Dum” — deceased. _

_ Dernier, Jacques “Frenchie” — deceased. _

_ Morita, James “Jim” — deceased. _

_ Falsworth, James Montgomery "Monty" — deceased. _

_ Jones, Gabriel “Gabe” — deceased. _

_ Barnes, James Buchanan “Bucky” — missing in action. _

Steve halted, looking down at the paper. The words stood out from the paper with stark contrast, as if they were mocking him.  _ Missing in action. _ He’d seen Bucky fall, had seen him meet a certain death. So why would they do this? Why say he went missing in action?

_ Bucky was dead! _

He took a deep breath, trying to steel himself for the rest of the files. If he concentrated on this any longer, he wouldn’t be able to continue going through them. He put down Bucky’s file and picked up the next one.

_ Carter, Margaret “Peggy”. _

He stopped, holding the paper still. There was no  _ deceased _ stamped on her file, and under her photo it said  _ retired _ , with a current address and phone number. Peggy was still alive, and here he had a direct way of contacting her.

He looked at his phone, wishing and wanting to call her, but he couldn’t bring himself to. She would be 94 by now, would she even really remember him? Would she even want to talk to him? And amongst all his doubts, there was the small voice that asked him if he even wanted to contact her. What would he say, and what would he do? Peggy was a direct line to his past, so what was to say that contacting her wouldn’t be like pouring salt into his wounds? He was already having a hard enough time coping with how much he missed Bucky.

Bucky, who was dead.

He put the file away, picking up the next one.

_ Stark, Howard — deceased. _

Under that file was a newer, one of Tony Stark. It was obviously Howard’s son, but what Fury thought he would do with that information he didn’t understand. Did he think Steve would want to contact him? And say what exactly?  _ “Hi, I knew your dead father” _ ? What would they even talk about? Steve hadn’t known Howard enough to talk about him, not to his son, and he doubted he and this Tony would have anything in common.

Really, he doubted he’d have much in common with the young of today's world. He was still too far in the past, too fixated with the events he hadn’t had any time to get closure to. Though, he doubted he’d find closure over Bucky’s death any time soon.

He dropped the paper back in the pile and stood up. He needed to go outside, get a change of scenery. He'd noticed that often worked when he got too caught up in thoughts about the past, although sometimes it only served to remind him how out of time he really was. Whenever he saw something that caught his attention in an extra way, maybe a piece of technology he never could have imagined, he’d think “ _ Bucky would have liked this _ ” and it was back to square one. The whole point of going outside was so as to not think about Bucky.

The bustle of activity on New York’s streets were similar to the time  before the war, but the stores, the advertising and the street vendors were all as if from another dimension. It made Steve both uneasy and brought some weird sort of comfort. It was a lot easier to not think about the time before the war when almost nothing reminded him of it.

Eventually he went into a diner to eat, and sat down outside. When he’d finished his meal, he took a pen from his pocket and absentmindedly began sketching on the paper from the bottom of the tray he’d gotten his food on.

Before he realised it, he’d started on the skyline, drawing the buildings of this new New York City. He’d thought he’d avoid thinking about the past, but now he couldn’t stop thinking about how much it all had changed. And once again it reminded him how fascinated Bucky would have been by seeing all this.

**→** Had he been at home — or anywhere else where there were no others — he sure would have let the sadness show itself in full force. But as it were he didn’t want to let any tears fall, to even let his mourning be seen on his face. He put more concentration into the sketch, hoping to distract himself, but knew he failed.

"Waiting on the big guy?"

Steve looked up, caught unaware, but threw up his Captain America facade and asked, "Ma'am?"

"Iron Man," the waitress said, briefly looking at the big tower in Steve's view. "A lot of people eat here just to see him fly by."

"Right," Steve sighed, realising he was frowning again. After he'd read the file on Howard's son, he'd done some own research, and he wasn't any more inclined to meet him after.

He fished into his pocket for some money when he realised the waitress was still standing there, an expectant smile on her face. "Maybe another time."

"Table's yours as long as you like," she smiled, and refilled his coffee. "Nobody's waiting on it. Plus we've got free wireless."

Steve paused with his hand in his pocket, looking up from the table. "Radio?"

She looked back at him as she walked to serve another table, but didn't answer. Something about the look on her face was familiar, but nothing he could pinpoint.

Behind him, an old man leaned back in his chair and said, "Ask for her number, you moron."

Steve looked back at the waitress, surprised. Had she been interested? Perhaps, now that he could recall that was the look with which gals had always gazed at Bucky. He cast his eyes down and frowned again. Had he seemed interested? So soon after Bucky?

~~~~~

He found a old style gym to train at, went there at least once every day, going through punching bag after punching bag working through his emotions. He was glad the war was over, glad that civilians didn't have to worry anymore; but he, he was a soldier, that needed a war to know what to do with himself, built for war as he was. He always felt uncomfortable, like any minute a fight would come to him, and his bed was too soft. He took out his anger in the gym, destroying more punching bags than he was comfortable acknowledging.

There was a feeling of both relief and resentment when Fury approached him about the Tesseract. As he’d said; it should have been left at the bottom of the ocean. He found the debriefing when he got back to his apartment, and reluctantly read it.

It didn’t prepare him for the knowledge of what happened to Banner. Trying to replicate the serum, that was exactly the reason why he had lost Bucky. The world, even though it didn’t seem to agree, was better of without people changed by it, perhaps even him. What was he really doing there, what did he contribute? The way he saw it, he only gave encouragement to people trying to repeat the catastrophe that became his life. And the after effects for Banner were unfortunate, nothing to blame him for, but it so easily could have been avoided.

Meeting Coulson, however… That was an experience in itself. The same thing he’d so desperately tried to get away from right after he’d gotten the serum, now repeated. He put on a smile, chatted, did what he by now knew was the way to best survive it.

Doing the same when he realised who they really wanted was Captain America was harder. All his life he’d tried to not be cast away in the shadows, be looked at like a real human who could contribute just as much as everyone else. With Captain America he’d gotten parts of it, but when it all came to the core, no one cared about Steve Rogers. The one who mattered was Captain America, a  hero with a suit. No one had any use for the person underneath.

Agent Romanoff seemed nosy, in a subdued way. He could tell there was a lot she wanted to know, but at the same time he had a feeling there was just as much that she knew.

Doctor Banner seemed nervous when they walked up to him, but his question whether this was weird for Steve got a smile out of him. He was the first to have asked. He told him half of the truth, the setting being familiar. Though he didn’t tell the rest, how even the concept that he was alive was foreign, on he had yet to grasp. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to come to terms with it.

Silently he handed over a ten dollar bill to Fury, finally admitting to himself that all this was too much, too new, too weird and surprising. He realised, as he stepped forward towards the big windows, that he hadn’t thought about Bucky since he read the debriefing. It wanted to take effect, hit full force the memory of him, but he forced it down, swallowed against its pressure. Not here. He could absolutely not show weakness here. He wasn’t even a person, just a soldier that had got juiced up and become famous. It was easy to pretend like that was true when Agent Coulson asked him to sign the Captain America cards.

~~~~~

Steve didn’t appreciate the fact that Loki turned out to be the same kind of asshole he’d fought during the war. He didn’t need another person like this,  _ the world _ didn’t need it. He hated HYDRA, and the fact that this guy shot blue blasts just like their weapons didn’t help his case.

Not even a month ago Steve thought he’d eliminated that sort of thing, just to be thrust right back into it in another lifetime, against someone who essentially wasn’t even human. Steve was damn tired of this.

He didn’t have to fight Loki for long before Stark Junior appeared out of nowhere. Sure, he was effective, but Steve felt like he didn’t take it seriously.

“I don’t like it,” Steve said when they’d gotten Loki aboard the quinjet — without any problems.

“What?” Stark asked with a tone far from serious. “Rock of Ages giving up so easily?”

“I don't remember it being ever that easy. This guy packs a wallop.”

“Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?”

“What?” How could he just said that? Steve wasn’t any older, had lived a life that was many years shorter, but no one seemed to realise that.

“It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle.”

Steve stared blankly at Stark. Was this guy serious, always acting like this? Did he really think it was okay to say things like that?

“Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in.”

“Well, there’s a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you.”

Steve was almost thankful for the lightning, because at least his conversation with Stark stopped. Though, Loki for some reason looked like he was completely against that opinion.

“What’s the matter? Scared of a little lightning?” he hadn’t thought a creature capable of the things Loki had done would be scared of something so simple as lightning.

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” he answered, still anxiously looking out the windows.

The next moment the quinjet shook as something struck right into it, as if something had landed on the roof. Steve reached for his helmet and put it on, just as Stark pressed a button and opened the ramp. Was he completely mad? Before he had any chance to confront him, another person had landed on the ramp, dressed just as strangely as Loki. Stark went to attack him, but one blow from the guy’s hammer and he was down. The man went on in, grabbing Loki by the neck before flying out with a swish of his hammer.

“And now there’s that guy,” Stark sighed out as he stood up.

“Another Asgardian?” Romanoff asked, almost screaming to be heard over the gusts of wind from the open ramp.

“Think the guy’s a friendly?” Steve asked.

“Doesn’t matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the tesseract’s lost.” Then Stark turned around, readying to jump out after them.

“Stark, we need a plan of attack!” Steve shouted after him.

“I have a plan. Attack.” And then he was gone.

_ God damn it _ . There wasn’t any time to do much else, so Steve sighed and reached for a parachute to strap on.

“I’d sit this one out, Cap,” Romanoff said, moving quick fingers over the various buttons.

“I don’t see how I can,” Steve replied, strapping on the parachute.

“These guys comes from legend. They’re basically gods.”

“There’s only one God, ma’am.” He reached for his shield and picked it up. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Before she could answer he dived out after them.

When he reached the ground, Stark and the man were fighting each other, their focus lost from Loki.

“Hey!” he called out and threw the shield so that it bounced against them before coming back to him. “That’s enough!” He jumped down from the tall tree stump, looking at the two men now facing him. “Now, I don’t know what you plan on doing here.”

“I have come here to put an end on Loki’s schemes!”

“Then prove it,” Steve said, using his Captain America voice. “Put that hammer down.”

“Um, yeah, no! Bad call! He loves his hammer!”

The man swung his arm out, knocking Stark back several feet with the hammer. “You want me to put the hammer down?!” The man bellowed, leaping into the air with his hammer raised. Steve sunk to his knees, raising the shield up to protect himself. The hammer met its surface, letting off a high, strong sound, sending out a shockwave with such force it knocked back not only the man but all the trees in their vicinity.

“Are we done here?” Steve asked when they had all shakily gotten up on their feet.

~~~~~

Steve listened — along with the others — to Fury’s talk to Loki, a sinking feeling in his chest. Loki was no better than the men he’d fought before, the same ideas, the same pretence that he stood over everyone else.

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” Banner asked after Fury had walked off and the video feed had closed.

“Loki’s gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what’s his play?”

“He has an army called the Chitauri,” Thor began saying. Perfect, a guy like him with an army? “They’re not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.”

“An army,” Steve deadpanned, looking around at the others, “from outer space.” And he had thought it couldn’t get worse then HYDRA.

“So he’d building another portal,” Banner said. “That’s what he needs Erik Selvig for.”

“Selvig?”

“He’s an astrophysicist,” Banner explained.

“He’s a friend,” Thor said with a frown.

“Loki has him under some kind of spell,” Romanoff said, “along with one of ours.”

“I wanna know why Loki let us take him,” Steve said, still worrying over how easy it had been. It never is. “He’s not leading an army from here.”

“I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki,” Banner said, gesture lightly with his glasses. “That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him.”

“Have care with how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother.”

_ Really now? _

“He killed 80 people in two days,” Romanoff said, looking up at Thor with an unimpressed look.

“He’s adopted,” Thor replied.

“I think it’s about the mechanics. Iridum, what do they need the Iridium for?”

“It’s a stabilizing agent,” Stark suddenly said walking in with Coulson. “It means the portal won’t collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D.” Turning to Thor, Stark said with a clap on his bicep, “No hard feelings, Point Break. You’ve got a mean swing. Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants to. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube.”

“When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?” Agent Hill asked.

“Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?”

“Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?” Steve shot in before Stark could get more words in.

“He's got to heat the cube to a 120 million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier,” Banner said.

“Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.”

“Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet.”

“Finally, someone who speaks English,” Stark said, pointing with his whole arm at Banner.

“Is that what just happened?” Steve asked no one in particular, looking around in amazement. Did he really expect people to have that level of ‘normal’ English?

“Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube,” Fury said, appearing almost suddenly and looking at Stark. “I was hoping you might join him.”

“Let's start with that stick of his,” Steve suggested. “It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon.”

“I don’t know about that,” Fury said, “but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.”

“Monkeys? I do not understand,” Thor said, looking puzzled.

“I do!” Steve let out before he could stop himself, pointing towards the general direction of Thor and Fury in his enthusiasm. Finally something that wasn’t completely foreign. “I understood that reference.”

(Even if it reminded him of how he had felt like a dancing monkey during the USO tours.)

~~~~~

“Hey, are you nuts?!” Steve exclaimed when he saw Stark poke Banner just as Steve walked in the lab.

“You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?” Tony kept on like he hadn’t heard Steve. “What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve couldn’t believe him. The situation they were in, and this was how he handled it?

“Funny things are,” Tony replied, pointing towards Steve with the stick he had just poked Banner with.

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doc.”

“No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.”

“You’re tiptoeing, big guy. You need to strut.”

“And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark.” He was trying not to lose his patience, but it was starting to become obvious that that would be a damn near impossible task when it came to Stark.

“Do you think I’m not?”  _ Yeah, he was beginning to think so. _ “Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.”

“You think Fury's hiding something?” Steve asked, not liking where this was going. It never ended well when bosses of big organisations hide things from the people working for them.

“He’s a spy. Captain, he’s  _ the  _ spy. His secrets have secrets.” He paused to throw some blueberries into his mouth and then point to Banner. “It’s bugging him to, isn’t it?”

“Eh…” Banner responded, waving his hands around his surrounding, “I just wanna finish my work here, and-”

“Doctor?” Steve interrupted him, wanting to know what he really thought.

Banner sighed and took off his glasses, but spoke”’A warm light for all mankind.’ Loki’s jab at Fury about the Cube.”

“I heard it.”

Banner pointed at Stark and said, “Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.”

“The Stark Tower? That big ugly-” Steve asked with half a smile formed before Stark shot him a look, “building in New York?”

“It’s powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?”

“That’s just a prototype. I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now.” Stark sounded proud, and Steve could give him that it at least was within something that was worth of feeling do for. Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all.

“So why didn’t SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?”

“I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all SHIELD’s secure files.”

He took it back. “I’m sorry, did you say-”

“Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we will know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide.”

“Yet you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around.”

“An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.”

“I think Loki’s just trying to wind us up. This is a man that means to start a war, and if we don’t stay focused he’ll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them.”

Captain America followed orders — (Steve didn’t) — and that’s what they would do.

“Following’s not really my style,” Stark said unfazed, throwing a few blueberries into his mouth.

Steve sighed, before looking into Stark’s eyes in challenge. “And you’re all about style, aren’t you?”

“Of the people in this room, which one is: A, wearing a spangly outfit, and B, not of use?”

“Steve,” Banner chimed in, perhaps sensing the tension on Steve’s shoulder, “tell me something doesn’t smell a little funky to you?”

Steve looked back at Tony, letting his eyes glance over him in annoyance. “Just find the Cube,” he finally said, squaring his jaw to keep in some of his anger and turned to leave.

"Wait, one more thing, Capsicle," Stark said, "How was it to crash into the ice?"

Steve gave him a deadpanned look.

It had been cold, and painful, and frustrating because he hadn't blacked out on the impact. He'd been rattled by the plane hitting the ice, but alive and conscious. At least the bombs should have gone off, he'd thought, but if they had, he'd missed it. He'd been able to stand up as ice and water started seeping in for every inch further down the plane went. He possibly could have been able to get out, but what would he have done then? In the middle of freezing nowhere, no one certain if he was alive or where he was.

He had laid down and closed his eyes.

"Cold," Steve eventually answered Stark and exited the lab.

~~~~~

Banner had been right, something had felt a little off. So, a little while later, when he managed to get away from prying eyes, he snuck down to the storage rooms. The door was locked with a access panel, but he manage to grab hold and pulled. It was hard, but he managed to get the door open and snuck in.

The room was filled with crates, and a few feet up was a walkway. He grabbed ahold and swung up, jumping over the railing and landing smoothly on its grating floor. He walked a bit, finding a few crates and opening them. Inside…

He’d thought he’d left it all behind, that he had put a stop for it. He’d thought HYDRA was no more, and that any equipment they had used would never again see daylight. He would never have thought, never expected to find part of their gear in the crates in one of SHIELD’s own bases.

Steve was furious, and more than that, he felt betrayed.

~~~~~

“What is Phase 2?” Stark asked Fury.

“Phase 2,” Steve answered in rage and slammed down one of HYDRA’s own assault rifles on the table in the lab, “ is SHIELD uses the Cube to build weapons. Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me.”

“Rogers, we gathered everything related to the tesseract,” Fury began saying, sounding desperate and walking towards Steve. “This does not mean that we’re making-”

“I’m sorry, Nick,” Stark interrupted, turning a screen around to show them. “What, were you lying?”

Steve looked at the screen, taking in the weapon’s blueprint. “I was wrong, director. The world hasn't changed a bit.” But how much he wished it had, at least in this aspect.

“Did you know about this?” Banner asked Romanoff when she stepped into the room with Thor.

“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?” Romanoff asked instead of answering.

“I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed,” Banner retorted.

“Loki’s been manipulating you.”

“And you’ve been doing what exactly?”

“You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you.”

“Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

“Because of him,” Fury said and pointed at Thor.

Thor looked surprised and stunned, and asked, “Me?”

“Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.”

“But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve asked, his anger fueled stronger once again.

“You're work with the Tesseract,” Thor interjected, “is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

“A higher form?” Steve asked, really not liking where this conversation was going.

“You forced our hand,” Fury said, daring to sound apologetic. “We had to come up with something.”

“Nuclear deterrent. ‘Cause that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you got your fortune, Stark,” Fury said, not turning to Stark.

“I’m sure if he still made weapons Stark would be neck deep,” Steve started saying, only to be interrupted by Stark.

“Wait, wait! Hold on, how is this now about me?”

“I’m sorry, isn’t everything,” Steve said, sending a clare Stark’s way.

“I thought humans were more evolved than this.”

“Excuse me, did  _ we  _ come to  _ your  _ planet and blow stuff up?”

“Did you always give your champions such mistrust?”

“Are you all really that naive?” Romanoff asked. “SHIELD monitors potential threats.”

“Is Captain America on threat watch?” Banner asked.

“You’re on that list?” Stark asked Steve, and the room erupted in a cacophony of voices and accusations.

“You speak of control yet you court caos.”

“That’s his M.O., isn’t it?” Banner asked, and the others fell silent. “I mean, what are we, a team? No, no, no. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re … we’re a time bomb.”

“You need to step away,” Fury said to Banner.

“Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?” Stark asked and put a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

Steve pushed away his hand and said in anger to Stark, “You know damn well why not! Back off!”

Stark turned fully to Steve, his face losing some of it’s previous playfulness. “I’m starting to want you to make me.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, taking a few steps around him, “big man in a suit of armor. Take that off,  what are you?”

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” He turned his head slowly to still watch Steve.

“I know guys without that worth ten of you.”  _ Bucky! _ “Yeah, I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

“I think I would just cut the wire,” Stark said, raising his eyebrows to the snark in his voice.

“Always a way out,” Steve said, smiling bitterly. “You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero? Like you?” Stark retorted, on the verge of starting to sound angry, with perhaps a hint of hurt. “You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

It hit it’s mark, feeding the gnawing doubt if he had ever really been anything important before the serum. There was no one around anymore to tell him that wasn’t true. But, perhaps there was a reason for that. Had he really been that important before? He hadn’t been able to do much, and now Captain America was important, not Steve Rogers.

“Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds.”

“You people are so petty, and tiny,” Thor said, and Stark rubbed hi head but moved away from Steve.

“Yeah, this is a team,” Banner said with a half-laugh.

“Agent Romanoff, would you escort Doctor Banner back to his-”

“Where?” Banner interrupted Fury. “You rented my room.”

“The cell was just in case-”

“In case you needed to kill me, but you can’t! I know, I tried!” By now, everyone's attention was focused on Banner as he after a breath’s pause continued. “I got low. I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out! So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freakshow and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?”

By now, Steve could see both Fury and Romanoff moving their hands to their guns, and Steve himself was strung tight, anticipating what Banner would do now that he was clearly upset.

“Doctor Banner,” he said, trying with his might to keep his voice calm and even, “put down the scepter.”

Banner looked down at it, his face scrunched up like he hadn’t realised he had picked it up. The next moment a beep went of from one of the screens and Banner snapped out of it, putting the scepter down on the table behind him.

“Got it,” Stark said.

“Sorry kids,” Banner said and walked over to the screen, “you don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“You located the tesseract?” Thor asked.

“I can get there fastest,” Stark hurried to say, to which Thor immediately said, “The tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it.” Steve was very much inclined to agree with him.

Stark turned to leave, but Steve grabbed him by the elbow. “You’re not going alone!”

“You gonna stop me?”

“Put on the suit, let’s find out.”

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.”

Steve clenched his jaw against the anger that rushed up. He was far younger than Stark, had barely lived 27 years despite how everyone depicted him as old. “Put on the suit,” he snapped out between his teeth.

“Oh my God,” Banner said, and the moment after an explosion rocked the helicarrier, blowing the all out to the room in different directions.

“Put on the suit,” Steve breathed out to Stark as the both hurried up from the floor.

“Yeah,” Stark replied right away, with urgency in his voice as they ran out of the room.

He distantly heard Fury and Hill in the com in his ear, until he heard, “Someone’s gotta get outside and patch that engine.”

“Stark, you copy that?” Fury asked.

“I’m on it!” Tony replied.

They ran through the cargo hold, debris falling from the ceiling and people running.

“Engine three, I’ll meet you there,” Stark said and took a right while Steve continued on forward. Steve ran, and found eventually the right place, with a door leading out, but with debris in his way. He pushed and pulled, and did eventually get it away, only leaving the clearly closed door. He pulled at that one too, and it opened revealing three SHIELD agents covering from sparks. He left the door opened and ran on when he deemed the men able to get away themselves.

“Stark!” he yelled when he’d gotten to the site of the explosion, holding onto a ladder to keep from falling down. “Stark, I’m here!”

“Good,” Stark replied over the com, and then came flying. “Let’s see what we got.”

He looked for a bit and then turned to Steve and said, “I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position.”

Steve understood about a fraction of what Stark had said, but pushed off and jumped up, grabbing hold and swinging on until he reached to panel. He pulled it out, looking at all cords and circuits, realising that this was going to be a lot harder than he would have thought.

“What’s it look like in there,” Stark asked.

“It looks like it runs on some form of electricity.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Steve could be wrong, but he was sure he heard a tone of sighing in his voice.

Helpfully, Stark explained what he was to look for, what would be right and what would be wrong. It took a little while longer than either of them wanted, but he managed it.

“Okay, the relays are intact,” he said and pushed the control panel back in. “What’s our next move?”

“Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won’t re-engage without a jump. I’m gonna have to get in there and push.”

“If that thing gets up to speed, you will be shredded!” Steve shouted at him, realising what he said meant.

“That stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage maglev and that could-”

“Speak English!” Steve told him, exasperated.

“See that red lever?” Steve turned to look and found it across a gap. “It’ll slow the rotors long enough for me to get out. Stand by it. Wait for my word.”

Steve jumped over and waited, and just a moment later two SHIELD men entered a level down. He had barely had the thought that they were help when one of them pulled out a grenade and threw it. Not having time to think it through, he jumped towards it, hitting it so it went down over the edge before exploding. He landed on a small platform on the other side, grabbing hold on the wall so as to not fall down himself. Then he jumped down to the men’s level, hitting one of them across the head and kicking the other in his solar plexus. The first man got back up, attacking him, but Steve just grabbed him and threw him over the edge where he went down screaming.

The next second, a man appeared in the doorway, already firing towards Steve. He jumped towards the other side and grabbed a piece of debris that he sent hurtling towards the man. Before he could reappear and shoot, Steve jumped back up a level and grabbed the rifle that had been thrown up there. He shot back on the man, taking careful steps towards the red lever, and the man retreated out of Steve’s line of fire.

More men came and he kept on shooting, but one of them got bold and stepped out of his hiding place to shoot back at Steve. Having nowhere to hide, his feet took him backwards, trying to get out of the volley of bullets. But, stepping too far, the floor beneath him gave away under his weight and he fell. In the last second he managed to get a hold of a loose cable to hang on to.

He’d been hanging for a few minutes when he heard Stark say, “Cap, hit the lever.”

“I need a minute here,” Steve screamed back to him as he tried to heave himself up with the cable.

“Lever,” was Stark’s only reply. “Now!”

With a last effort in strength he managed to get back up, but the men were still firing towards him. He summoned as much strength as he could, biting back against the pain of the bullets and heaved himself up enough to pull down the lever. When he tried to stand up the man was still shooting, but then Stark came flying, right into the man and sending him sprawling back.

With the threat gone — for now, at least — Steve let himself sag in his half-sitting position, breathing heavily.

“Agent Coulson is down.” Steve heard the words in a post-fight haze, not sure if he had heard the right words. “They called it.”

He and Stark were called in the briefing room, with Fury and Maria Hill. Steve stared down at the table, distantly knowing Stark did the same beside him. He’d thought — foolishly — that he would get away from teammates dying, that those situations where over. Not even a month had gone since Bucky died. One month. One month in which he’d transferred into a mindset where teammates weren’t going to die left and right around him.

“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket,” Fury said, throwing a handful of bloody cards on the table. “Guess he never did get you to sign them.”

Steve bent forward and picked up one of them slowly, feeling the frown on his face. He held it carefully in one of the bloodfree corners, his hand shaking as he looked at the bloodstained picture of him saluting in the show Captain America uniform.

“We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye...Maybe I had that coming.”

Steve dropped the card back down to the table.

“Yes,” Fury continued, starting to slowly walk around the table, “we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract.” He came to a stop behind one of the chairs, putting his hands on the back of it. “I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this -” here Steve looked up at Stark, taking in the shift in his posture, “- called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.”

Steve found it reminding him of his own group — minus the ‘remarkable people’. Aside from himself, the group had consisted of ordinary people fighting for a cause they believed in, achieving remarkable things.

“Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea,” Fury continued. “In heroes.”

Abruptly, Stark stood up, standing still for just a moment before walking out, his steps determined. Steve found it odd, and let his gaze linger on Stark’s retreating form.

“Well,” Fury said, him too looking after Stark, “it’s an old fashioned notion.”

~~~~~

Steve gave him a little time before he followed, eventually joining Stark where Loki’s cell had been.

“Was he married?” he asked, leaning back against the railing with his arms crossed.

“No,” Stark said, quickly and forcedly natural. “There was a, uh, cellist, I think.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, moving his gaze from Stark down to the floor. “He seemed like a good man.

Stark gave of a dry laugh and said, “He was an idiot.”

“Why? For believing?”

“For taking on Loki alone.” Stark said, stepping away from where he had stood looking down.

“He was doing his job.”

“He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have…”

“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony,” Steve replied, walking towards where Stark had come to a halt.

“Right, I’ve heard that one before.” Stark walked right past him.

“Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?”

“We are not soldiers!” Stark’s voice was raising with every word, his whole demeanor showing off  how upset he was. He seemed to catch himself and stared out at nothing in particular. “I’m not marching to Fury’s fife.

“Neither am I,” Steve said, careful of keeping his voice calm. “He’s got the same blood on his hands that Loki does. But right now, we’ve got to put that behind us and get this done.” His last words were a bit more forceful, but intentionally so, as to hopefully get his point across better. “Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list-”

“He made it personal,” Stark interrupted, turning sharply from the bloodstain on the wall to look at Steve.

“That’s not the point.”

“That is the point. That’s Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?”

“To tear us apart,” Steve replied like it was obvious, because it was.

“Yeah, divide and conquer is great but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That’s what he wants. He wants to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it. He want’s an audience.” By now Stark was frantically waving around his hand, like he was close to figuring something out.

“Right, I caught his act in Stuttgart.”

“Yeah. That was just previews. This is opening night. And Loki, he’s a full-tilt diva, right? He wants flowers, he wants parades. He wants monuments  to the sky with his name plastered…” Stark abruptly silenced, like he had just realised something. Steve raised his eyebrows slightly, waiting for Stark to tell him what.

“Son of a bitch.”

In rapt detail, Stark told him about his tower, and the two of them coming to an agreement that it must be it.

Steve — dressed up in his full costume — went to get Romanoff.

“Go where?” Romanoff asked when he told her it was time to go.

“I’ll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?”

“I can,” Barton said as he walked out of the adjoined bathroom.

Steve looked over to Romanoff, checking that he was good, to which she nodded.

“You got a suit.”

“Yeah,” Barton nodded.

“Then suit up.”

~~~~~

After retrieving his shield and helmet, he walked with Romanoff and Barton to one of the jets, walking in through the back into where a young SHIELD agent was working.

“Hey, you guys aren’t authorised to be in here,” he said, standing up when he saw them approaching.

“Son, just don’t.”

They got the agent out and took off with Barton and Romanoff at the control panel. As they flew out of the helicarrier Steve saw Stark zooming away in his suit ahead of them.

They got to New York a little after Stark, when some form of portal had already been opened in the sky above Stark tower, and out swarmed creatures on small flying ships. Steve couldn’t really believe it, but he had no other explanation than ‘aliens’.

“Stark, we’re heading north east,” Romanoff told him through a com.

“What, did you stop for drive-thru? Head up Park, I’m gonna lay ‘em out for you.”

When the alien came into view, Romanoff fired a machine gun towards them, taking them all out. Then they seeked out Loki, and found him battling Thor at Stark Tower. After just a few shots at Loki, who turned and aimed the scepter towards them, sending a blue blast that hit the right engine. Barton tried getting the quinjet under control, but was forced to crash it on the ground in front of a building.  Unhurt, the three of them hurried out onto the street.

“We’ve got to get back up there,” Steve told Romanoff and Barton as they back ran towards Stark Tower.

They didn’t get all too far before they slowed down, coming to a halt and staring up at the sky. Steve wasn’t sure he actually believed what he saw, or if his eyes were playing tricks on him. A long, worm-like thing with wings came down from the portal, and more of the aliens were jumping off of it.

“Stark, are you seeing this?”

“Seeing,” Stark replied over the com. “Still working on believing.”  _ That makes it two of us. _ “Where’s Banner? Has he shown up yet?”

“Banner?” Steve asked, surprised. He thought… he thought Banner had fallen down, to a certain death.

“Just keep me posted.”

Steve ran forward, taking cover behind an overturned taxi where Romanoff and Barton were already crouched.

“We’ve got civilians still trapped up here.”

Looking down the street, seeing Loki with a band of aliens blowing up everything in their way, harming civilians while doing it, Steve said, “They’re fish in a barrel down there.”

Suddenly a few of the aliens jumped down in front of them, and Barton opened fire on them. Romanoff looked at Steve and said, “We got this. It’s good. Go.”

“Do you think you can hold them off?” Steve asked, looking over to Barton.

“Captain,” Barton said, pushing a button on his bow, “it would be my genuine pleasure.”

Standing up, he fired an arrow at one of the aliens, Romanoff joining him the next moment and firing her two guns. Seeing that they could handle themselves, Steve jumped down from the bridge, running towards the civilians in need of help. He had to jump and run over cars overturned in the middle of the street, all the while dodging the blue blasts coming from the aliens’ weapons.

When he reached an area with several cops shooting at the aliens he landed on the hood of one of their cars, addressing two of the closest men, “You need men in these buildings. There are people inside and they’re gonna run right into the line of fire. You take them through the basement or through the subway. You keep them off the streets. I need a perimeter as far back as 39th.”

One of them — seemingly with higher authority than the other cop — pointed at him, looking at him like he was ridiculous. “Why the hell should I take orders from you?”

Right, the public still thought he was dead.

Before he had time to reply, an explosion went off behind Steve, and he turned around to find two aliens coming his way. They landed on either side of him on the car, but before they could attack he roundhouse kicked one of them with the shield, and dodged down behind the shield to deflect a blast coming from the second one’s weapon. He stood back up, punching it in the face and whirled around to meet the first one. A little dodging and punching and he then removed the gun-slash-arm with a hard slice down with his shield and then punched the alien in the face with it.

The cop turned to the others, repeating the orders Steve had given him.

Handing off the alien weapon to one of the cops, Steve ran back to where he had left Romanoff and Barton, jumping into the fight when it was starting to look like too much for them. But, him punching them with the shield wasn’t enough, not when there were more coming all the time.

Electricity hitting all aliens around them came suddenly to Steve’s great relief, Thor landing on the ground shortly after.

“What’s the story upstairs?”

“The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable.”

“Thor’s right,” Stark said over the coms. “We gotta deal with these guys.”

“How do we do this?” Romanoff asked.

“As a team,” Steve replied right away, not taking any time to think through the answer, because it was so obvious to him.

“I have unfinished business with Loki.”

“Yeah? Well, get in line,” Barton told Thor.

“Save it,” Steve snapped. “Loki’s gonna keep this fight focused on us and that’s what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us to…”

Steve trailed off at the sound of a motorcycle coming closer, and turned around to see Banner driving it.

“So,” Banner said as they walked towards him, “this all seems horrible.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Romanoff replied, eyeing Banner.

“Sorry.”

“No, we could use a little worse.”

“Stark, we got him,” Steve said into the com.

“Banner?”

“Just like you said.”

“Then tell him to suit up,” Stark said. “I’m bringing the party to you.”

Right after, Stark came flying, the big worm-like thing flying behind him, almost leveling a building its side crashed into.

“I— I don’t see how that’s a party,” Romanoff said, and Steve was very much inclined to agree with her.

Stark swooped low, the worm following after and landing on the street but continuing forward like a train off its track. After turning to look at it, Banner started walking towards it.

“Doctor Banner,” Steve said. “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

“That’s my secret, Captain,” Banner said looking back at Steve before keeping on forward. “I’m always angry.” As if on cue, his body grew bigger and took on a green tint, to then fully transform to the big, green body that was the Hulk. With the motion from the shift he drew his hand forward and punched the worm-thing on the tip of it head, making it fall into itself. Its previous motion made it start to fall over on its back, as if Banner had grabbed it and swung it over. Unfortunately, it was falling towards where Steve was standing with Romanoff, Barton and Thor.

“Hold on!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Stark shooting something that hit the worm-thing where part of its shell-armour had fallen off. Realising what was going to happen, Steve ducked down and hid behind the shield, hiding Romanoff as he did so. Around them, the aliens screeched as their gigantic worm exploded.

“Guys,” Romanoff said not even a minute later, and when Steve looked up he saw several more worm-things and thousands of aliens come down from the portal.

“Call it, Cap,” Stark said.

“All right, listen up,” Steve said, taking the command. “Until we can close that portal up there, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof. Eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash.”

“Can you give me a lift?” Barton asked Stark.

“Right, better clench up, Legolas,” Stark replied, grabbed Barton and flew off.

Steve turned to Thor and said, “Thor, you got to try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You got that lightning. Light the bastards up.”

Thor swung his hammer and flew away, and Steve turned to Romanoff. “You and me, we stay here on the ground. We keep the fighting here. And Hulk…” Steve turned around to Banner, pointing at him, “...Smash.”

Banner jumped up, attacking some aliens. Not a moment later a whole flock of them came for Steve and Romanoff, sending them off into battle right away. After they had knocked out or killed all of them, they slumped down for a breath.

“Captain, none of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we don’t close that portal.”

“Our biggest guns couldn’t touch it,” Steve said, looking up at the tower where the Tesseract powered the device keeping the portal open.

“Well, maybe it’s not about guns.”

“If you want to get up there you going to need a ride.”

Romanoff sighed and kicked off from the ground, walking forward. “I got a ride.” Steve looked up at the aliens zooming by just above them. Romanoff looked back at him and said, “I could use a boost, though.”

Steve, understanding what she meant, backed up and angled the shield. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be fun.”

She took of running, jumping up on the hood of a car and over the Steve’s shield, which he pressed up to give her a boost up in the air. She grabbed hold of one of the aliens small flying chariots and was gone.

Immediately, a whole group of them was on him, not sparing him a moment to think, just sending him into battle mode. For a brief moment Stark came flying down, taking out a few of them, then shooting his beam at the shield that Steve then used as a reflection and took out the rest. Right away, Stark was off again. A few more aliens came, that he battled off, taking out the last one as Barton spoke to him over the com.

“Captain, tha bank on 42nd past Madison. They cornered a lot of civilians there.”

“I’m on it.” He took off running, got to the bank and jumped in through a window just as one of the aliens took out a device that started humming and blinking blue. Throwing his shield at the alien to knock it out, he threw himself down after what had to be a bomb. Two more aliens started attacking him, and he threw one of them over the railing down to where a crowd of civilians stood.

“Everyone, clear out!” he yelled down at them as the other alien grabbed him from behind, managing to pry his helmet off.

The bomb was beeping more frequently now, and one of the aliens dove for it, throwing it at Steve where he crouched behind his shield at the window. It explodes as it hit the shield, sending him out the window where he landed on a car, feeling dazed and hurting from the crash. He had to struggle to get up, and was breathing hard when he landed on the ground on his feet. There was a gash in his arm from the glass, hurting like a bitch, but he could barely feel it. His body was sinking down into a numb haze.

Firefighters were helping civilians out of the building, all of them seeming to be out of harm's way. Deeming the situation in control, he joined up with Thor fighting aliens on the ground. Turning around, Steve was hit in the stomach by one of the blasts from their weapons. It sent him sprawling in the ground, his abdomen protesting against the movement as he tried to stand up. He had to get back up and fight, nothing else was important. He had one foot on the ground with the knee of his other leg when Thor came over and offered his hand. He grabbed it, thankful, and hauled himself up on his feet. He grimaced against the hot searing in his abdomen, trying to push it down.  _ It’s not important. _

“Are you ready for another bout?” Thor asked, letting go of his hand.

“What, are you getting sleepy?” Steve asked, still cradling the left side of his abdomen where the blast had done the biggest damage.

“I can close it,” he heard Romanoff say over the com. “Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down.”

“Do it!” Steve shouted, fervently.

“No, wait,” Stark said.

“Stark,” Steve shouted, starting to think he was really nuts, “these things are still coming!”

“I got a nuke coming in,” Stark said, sounding way too calm for the situation (Steve just wanted it to be over). “It’ gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it.”

“Stark,”  Steve said, realising what he was thinking, “you know that is a one-way trip.”

Just then he could see Stark coming, the nuke in his grip, flying straight for Stark Tower. With barely any marginal, he turned it upwards, and went up and into the portal. All around them, the aliens fell to the ground, as if having no more power.

Steve looked up, trying to see Stark through the portal but seeing nothing. Although it pained him to say it, he told Romanoff in a low voice, “Close it.” They couldn’t afford any more aliens getting through. Romanoff did what she had to close the portal, the device letting off one last blast before shutting down. The portal began closing. Just as it was gone and he was about to look away, Stark appeared. For a moment Steve was relieved, saying, “Son of a gun.”

But then he saw it, just as Thor said, “He’s not slowing down.” Thor began swinging his hammer, but before he could take off Banner came hurtling through the sky and grabbed Stark.

Stark was motionless when Steve and Thor arrived at the place where Banner had landed. “Is he breathing,” Steve asked and Thor pried off the front part of his helmet. Stark was still, and Steve couldn’t hear anything when he bent forward to listen. Feeling deflated he sat back, feeling his face fall.  _ Not again. _

As if not liking the fact that Stark could be dead, Banner roared, and Stark startled awake.

“What the hell?” Stark asked, looking dazed. “What just happened. Please tell me nobody kissed me.”

Steve had to smile, although a small one, because they were all alive, although hurt. Small victories.

“We won.”

It was a realisation of doubled nature, because first then did it really sink in that this was the  _ second _ of wars he had thought, and that they both had been won.

Stark let out a relieved breath. “Alright, yay. Hurray. Good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is but I wanna try it.”

“We are not finished yet,” Thor said, looking up at Stark Tower.

“And then shawarma after.”

~~~~~

They went together up in Stark Tower, to the floor where Loki was crawling on the floor, looking immensely hurt.  When he looked back to see them all standing there — with expressions that all matched Steve’s unimpressed on, Steve knew — Loki looked like he knew there was no other way than to give up.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Loki said, “I’ll have that drink now.”

After taking care of Like they went to the shawarma place that turned out to certainly not be worth all the excitement Steve had thought. He didn’t have an appetite, so he just sat in his seat at the table, resting his head in his hand while the others ate.

~~~~~

Thor left with Loki a few days later, taking the Tesseract with them. Steve was both glad and immensely relieved to see it go, to get it away from earth. After that they all parted ways, saying goodbye, even if only for now. Steve shook hands with Stark, having to admit to himself that he wasn’t as bad as he had seemed at first glance.

Banner and Stark drove away in Stark’s car, and Barton and Romanoff both got in a car together. Steve took his Harley-Davidson and drove, wanting to say it was ‘home’ but knowing he’d never fully be able to call the apartment home.

 


	4. Chapter 4

A month after the battle of New York he moved to D.C. and joined SHIELD as a field agent. He didn't know what else to do with himself. He started out as a level 4 — everyone must have figured paperwork was a misuse of resources. He advanced quickly up to level 6, where he had his first mission with Romanoff. Steve was at first a little surprised to find her working for SHIELD, but really, maybe it was exactly her kind of thing to do.

July came, and with it Steve’s dread for the 4th. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Independence Day, it was rather that he didn’t have any desire to celebrate his birthday. Maybe he’d get away with not doing it — after all, he didn’t really have anyone he’d consider a friend. Stark did however call him up wanting to host a party, but Steve turned down the offer as politely he could.

He stayed in the whole day, buried underneath his blanket, only getting up to use the bathroom or — once —to eat.

~~~~~

He started a routine of taking a run in the early morning, derived from his insomnia, especially in the morning. It kept him active even as Fury forced him to take a week of vacation at the beginning of August.

In early September Romanoff took him to visit the Wall of Valor; located in SHIELD’s Academy of Science and Technology, which Romanoff said was where the SSR had it’s base before SHIELD was founded.

“To honor the members of SHIELD who gave their lives in service of humanity,” Steve read quietly to himself. Romanoff was standing a little bit off to the side, giving the impression of privacy.

Amongst the first names he found Bucky and himself, standing side by side.  _ James B. Barnes _ and  _ Steven G. Rogers _ . Gently he reached up one hand and grazed his fingers over Bucky’s plate. God, he missed him.

Taking a steadying breath he let his hand fall to his side, stepping away from the wall before tears could begin falling. Romanoff was there right away, taking his arm.

“Let’s get coffee.”

Steve didn’t protest and let Romanoff lead him over to the cafeteria where she ordered two coffees. With their beverages in hand they sat down at a small table.

Even though it had reminded him of his grief, it felt good having seen the wall. It was a reminder that even though Steve had lost his world that day, the actual world had been able to spin on because of what they had achieved.

“Thank you, Romanoff,” Steve said, staring down into his cup of coffee.

“Call me Natasha,” she replied, and Steve looked up at her, surprised.

She was smiling at him, and he hurriedly said, “Steve.” He was craving someone calling him by his name, reminding him that he was a person primary and Captain America secondary.

~~~~~

Back at base, Commander Hill approached him a few days later. She didn’t often talk to him, both of them too busy with their assigned work, and when she did it was always for a mission.

So it surprised him when she held out an envelope addressed to him and asked, “Do you know a Rebecca Barnes Proctor?”

_ Becca! _ “I knew her as Rebecca Barnes, but yes.”

“Then this is for you,” Hill said and handed him the envelope before leaving in a hurry.

In an exercise in self-restraint he waited until he got back to his apartment to open it.

He’d expected a letter, something, but not an invitation to a birthday party on October 15th. Becca’s 90th birthday party.  _ 90th _ birthday! Had she really gotten that old? When Steve last saw her she hadn’t even turned 21 yet, seeming so young even though there was only a 4 year difference between them.

There was an address in New York and a phone number on the invitation, with a note to RSVP if you were coming. Steve put the invitation back in the envelope and put it on his dresser, and got himself ready for bed. He wanted to see her again, he really did, but there was going to be so many there he didn’t know, but who knew of Captain America. He wasn’t sure he wanted that, and he definitely didn’t want to take all the attention from Becca, on her own birthday.

On the other hand, he really wanted to see her again.

~~~~~

After Fury had finished telling him he was promoting Steve to level 7, Steve asked for October 15th off. Fury was obviously surprised — and, to be fair, he barely took a day off if he could help it.

“Any particular reason?” Fury asked, but in a way that Steve knew he had already granted him the day.

“Bucky’s sister is turning 90 and she’s having a birthday celebration.”

“Of course,” was all Fury said before dismissing Steve.

~~~~~

“Steve!” exclaimed an old lady standing in the doorway when he approached the house. Her hair was grey and shorter than he remembered, her face wrinkly but unmistakably Becca’s.

“You came,” she smiled, pulling him into a hug when he was close enough.

“Sorry I forgot to let you know,” he mumbled into her hair, soaking in the touch of someone he had known before.

Becca pulled out of the embrace after a minute, and said, "Come on in." She led Steve into a cozily decorated hall, a few family photos hanging on the wall. Steve saw one old, with Bucky and his parents.

"Rich!" Becca called into the house, and a moment later an old man came into view, supporting himself on a cane.

"Steve, this is my husband Richard. Richard, this is my old friend Steve."

"Nice to meet you, fella," Richard said and extended a hand for Steve to shake. His grip was surprisingly strong.

“Likewise,” Steve said.

Nothing said about him being Captain America, and although he could see the recognition in Richard’s eyes he didn’t say anything about it.

“Oh!” Becca said as if suddenly remembering something. “You need to meet Tom!”

“Tom?” Steve asked, not knowing who he was.

“Thomas Jefferson.”

“Like the president?”

“Exactly like the president,” Becca said, pulling him through the house. “Don’t sound so surprised, you knew Bucky.” She did have a point.

She came to a stop behind a man whose hair was grey, but didn’t look as old as herself or Richard. “Tom,” she said and tapped his back, interrupting him from his current conversation. The man turned around and Steve understood right away who he was.

He looked like Bucky, like he probably would have done if he had been allowed to become old. Steve could for a moment only stare.

“Hello,” he said when he got back to himself, extending his hand, “I don’t remember Bucky and Becca having a little brother.”

“He was born in 1946,” Becca explained as Tom took Steve’s hand. “Only two years older than my daughter.”

“Yes,” Tom said with a smile, “you like to tease me about it.”

“You look so much like Bucky,” Steve heard himself saying. He winced, but Tom didn’t seem to mind.

“Well, then I certainly must be one handsome devil.” His tone was all playful, and Steve had to crack a smile.

“Where’s Jerry?”

“I think he’s outside with the kids, why?”

“I thought I’d introduce him to Steve.”

“I’ll go get him.”

Becca looked after him, and when he was out of earshot, she said, “Jerry is Tom’s husband.”

“Marriage is legal?” Steve asked, surprised. How had he possibly missed that?

“In New York at least, and some other states too.”

A man about Tom’s age came walking back with Tom, a small kid held in his arms.

“That’s my son’s grandkid,” Becca said just as the two men reached back to them. “Her name’s Sophia and she turned two at the end of July.”

“Your  _ son’s _ grandkid,” Steve asked, honestly a little surprised by how many generations must be present — but to be fair there were a lot of people in the house.

“Yes,” Becca began her explanation, “I have two kids, who had five kids total. Three of them have seven kids altogether.”

“That’s,” Steve said, a little overwhelmed, “a lot of kids.”

“I’m used to it, our family has always been big. Oh!” As if suddenly remembering herself, she turned back to Jerry and introduced him. “Steve, this is Jerry. Jerry, this is my old friend Steve.”

“Old?”  Jerry sounded like he didn’t really believe her. “I’m sorry, but you can’t be more than thirty.”

“Captain Steve Rogers, sir,” Steve said and stretched his hand out, hoping that it would be enough for Jerry to recognize him. He really didn’t want to introduce himself as Captain America.

“Rogers? As in Bucky’s old friend?”

“Yes, the very same.”

“You crashed into the ice.” Seeming to understand how rude he came off, he added, “Sorry, didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said straight away out of habit. But he meant it, it was okay — Jerry had apologised. “I was thawed out in May this year.”

“So it was really you during the battle of New York, not some other fella in your costume?”

“No, it was me.” Then, raising an eyebrow, Steve said, "So, Tom ... and Jerry."

"Yeah, yeah, we know," Tom said, send a glare at his sister. "Becca thinks it  _ so _ funny."

After them, Steve met a lot of people, most of which he forgot their names.

"Oh goodness!" Becca suddenly said, bending down to pick up a small thing from the grass. "Can you give this to Ellie? She's seventeen, the only teen so she shouldn't be too hard to find."

"What is it?" Steve asked, turning the object over in his hand.

"It's her inhaler, she has asthma."

He found her almost right away, sitting in a chair overlooking some of the kids playing in the grass.

“You dropped this?” he said, holding out the inhaler for her.

She looked up in surprise, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand to look at him. “Thanks. You are…” She trailed off, letting the statement become a question.

“I’m Steve, an old friend of Becca. Can I sit down?” He made a vague hand motion towards the chair beside her, and she nodded.

“How do you know Granny?” she asked, her eyes back on the kids. She can’t have recognised him yet.

“I’m- I was best friends with Bucky.”

“Rogers?” Her head snapped back to look at him. “Steve Rogers, born in 1918?!”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Huh.” She was quiet for a moment before her eyes got a familiar glint in them. He didn’t particularly like where this was going.

“Can you tell me about Bucky?” Her enthusiasm was clear from yards away, and Steve was surprised himself. He’d thought she’d want to know about Captain America. “I’m sorry if I seem intrusive, but you knew him better than anyone, even better than Becca knew him. I want to write about him for my school project ‘My Hero’, and I wanted to portray him as accurately as I can.” She stopped herself, as if realising she was coming on strong. “I mean, only if you want to, you don’t have to.”

“I’m…”

“Maybe another time?” Ellie said, figuring out how uncertain Steve was. “Too soon? I’m sorry, I forgot it’s only been like four months for you.” They lapsed into a silence that Ellie broke a little while later, asking, “How was it to have asthma in the forties?”

“A real pain in the ass,” Steve said and sighed at the memory. “All doctors prescribed was asthma cigarettes, and they didn’t exactly help all that much. Plus, Bucky insisted on not stopping smoking. You know my other health problems?”

“Most of them, I think.”

“Well, those coupled with asthma wasn’t that great. It was a wonder I never died, and I’m convinced I probably was meant to a few times, but that’s not something to tell Bucky. He hated when I got sick; he even insisted that I stay in bed every time I caught a cold. Which, let me tell you, was often, especially in the winter.”

“Sounds like it’s better to have asthma nowadays.”

“Treatment-wise, sure, but it’s always a real pain. How’s it for you?”

“Not so bad,” Ellie said, eyeing her inhaler, “not as long as I don’t forget or lose this one.”

~~~~~

About half an hour later, Becca came up to him, and said, “I’ve got something to show you.”

She took him into the house, and up to the attic. She described a cardboard box to him and he helped her in looking for it. Becca eventually found it, stacked away high up on a shelf, from where Steve took it down.

“After you both … went away,” Becca explained, “we cleared out the apartment. A lot of the things we gave away to the Smithsonian exhibit — we really didn’t have place for all of it. But I kept most of your sketch books — though we almost missed them, you managed to hide them very well.”

As Becca rifled through the box for them, Steve was pretty sure he knew which ones she meant. The most dangerous of them he had hid under a loose floorboard, some of them dating back many years before the baseball match. Then he remember one in particular and blushed furiously at the thought that Becca had looked through it.

Becca handed them over when she’d found them, sitting beside Steve as he looked through them. A lot wasn’t all that incriminating — whole books filled with drawings of Bucky doing mundane things, or detailed sketches of his face.

“This one,” Becca said and held out a small, black book, “I kept hidden from the others. I’m almost certain I’m the only one who has seen it.”

It was the most secret book, the one Bucky had helped him find a good hiding spot for. At the time, they both feared the repercussions of anyone finding it. It was, Steve remembered with clarity, the book he’d used every time he drew Bucky naked. Some of them were just simple sketches of the human anatomy where he’d used Bucky as a model, but most had a far greater sexual nature — showing Bucky in his post-coital state, or laid out for Steve.

“I didn’t look through the whole when I realised what it was,” Becca reassured him as he sat there staring down at the closed book. “And I didn’t show anyone, because I guessed you’d have wanted that privacy, even though I thought you were both gone.”

“Thank you, Becca.” He wanted the privacy, he absolutely did. He shuddered at the thought of the possibility of having been outed when he was in the ice. He knew it wasn’t illegal anymore, but old habits died hard, and he wanted something that was his own, that he could disclose when he himself wanted to.

“If it’s any consolation, I knew before.”

Steve looked up in surprise. She’d known?

“It’s not like I couldn’t see how much you two loved each other, especially not when I visited you at your apartment. I really hope you were more sneaky than that when you were out in public.”

“Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure we were,” he answered lamely. She’d known, all this time.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” Becca said and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I miss him,” Steve said pathetically, laying his head on her shoulder.

“I know, I do too. Sometimes it hurts so much I can barely get out of bed. I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it only really takes longer between the times, never really better.”

~~~~~

Ellie found him sitting in the chair again right after food had been served, alone. She was holding a plate in her hand, and eyed the chair beside Steve. He nodded as answer to her unspoken question.

“Would you have married Peggy if you didn’t crash into the ice?”

The question startled him, but he wanted to answer her truthfully. He thought for a moment. “Maybe, if she’d wanted to. I never really thought I’d find a gal, not before the serum.”

“Yeah, Granny told me you and Bucky went on a lot of dates.” Her statement was inconspicuous, but Steve still found himself blushing.

“For the record, I probably would have.”

“What?”

“Married Peggy, if I was in you position. Or, if we weren’t related, I probably could have married Bucky.”

“Yeah,” Steve said softly, and Ellie turned to him in surprise with an eyebrow raised.

Steve blushed, but decided, and picked up the sketch book filled with sketches of Bucky doing mundane things. He handed it to her, and she carefully leafed through it, taking time looking at every drawing.

“I really loved him,” Steve said as he looked at the drawings, his voice soft, barely above a whisper.

“Like, ‘He was a great friend and like a brother to me’ love,” Ellie asked, her eyes narrowed only slightly, “or-”

“I would have married him if I had the chance. I  _ love _ him.” Realising he’d used present tense, he said, mostly to himself, “I still do.”

"There's this girl in my class," Ellie said, changing the subject. "She's really nice, and kinda amazing, and I'd really like to ask her out, but..."

Steve kept quiet, waiting for her to continue.

"I don't know if I can," she eventually said with her voice almost a whisper.

"Afraid to talk to her, or afraid how she will react?"

"The last one, mostly. She's my friend, and if she doesn't like me like that, I still want her as a friend. She already knows I'm bisexual, so that's not what I'm worried about."

"You know," Steve began, "it took 6 years after I realised I was in love with Bucky until I acted on it. And even then I'm not sure if it was he or I that instigated the kiss. Waiting can be a real bitch, and it's mostly worth it in the end to come clean."

"Wow," Ellie said jokingly, "I'm getting relationship advice from Captain America."

Steve cracked a smile; it was kinda funny.

"I see you had quite the conversation with Ellie," Becca said when he was about to leave, the two of them standing alone at the front door.

"She's a nice kid," Steve said as response, smiling lightly.

~~~~~

_ “Look at the fireworks, Stevie, they’re all for you,” Bucky said, repeating what he had said when Steve turned five, shortly after they had met. _

_ “Bucky,” Steve protested, “I know they’re not for me, don’t try it.” _

_ “That’s what you’re saying,” Bucky said, slinging an arm around Steve’s shoulder. “All these fireworks, they’re celebrating you turning seventeen.” _

_ They were sitting up on the roof of Steve’s building, watching the 4th of July fireworks exploding on the sky over Brooklyn. His mom had packed them with cookies before they went up, reminding them to stay away from the edge. He and Bucky had done this the last few years on Steve’s birthday, just sitting there in silence watching the sky explode in colours. _

_ Bucky pulled Steve closer, so close that Steve could hear his heartbeat through his shirt. Bucky’s was warm, but Steve didn’t mind. He never minded Bucky touching him, no matter the temperature around them. _

_ “You deserve to have these fireworks being for you,” Bucky said after a moments silence, so quiet Steve almost didn’t hear him. “You’re the most amazing person in the world.” _

_ Steve didn’t reply, not trusting himself with words, and not wanting Bucky to look at him because that meant he would see how furiously Steve was blushing. _

_ He wanted it. He wanted to hear Bucky say that to him every day; he wanted Bucky to hold him like this always, even when it wasn’t a special occasion. He wanted to get to hug Bucky like this too, he wanted to hold Bucky’s hand the way all his gals did, and he wanted to kiss Bucky like they did, every day, he wanted— _

_ What he wanted he would never get, Steve thought as he realised what exactly he had just thought. He couldn’t— he couldn’t want Bucky like that. _

_ But he still knew it, still knew that he had just realised he was in love with Bucky. _

Steve woke up with a start, breathing heavily. It wasn’t a bad memory, rather the opposite. He had been very happy at the time, and he hadn’t even gotten sadder when he realised he was in love with his best friend.

Steve fell back on his bed, knowing he wasn’t going to sleep more that night.

~~~~~

Natasha invited him over for her birthday. Or, rather, demanded he come over on the 22nd, saying it was her birthday. And that it was Thanksgiving, but she said that wasn't as important.

October had passed over into a chilly November, and he regretted not bringing a warmer coat as he walked over to her place. He relished in the warmth when he stepped into her apartment building. It wasn’t exactly that he was freezing, but he hated the cold.

He walked up the stairs and knocked on her door. He heard barking from somewhere, but he knew Natasha didn’t have a dog. The door opened and something big and yellowed jumped at him, barking happily.

_ What? _

“Aw, Lucky, no.”

Steve looked up and saw Clint standing in the doorway, looking at the dog that was currently trying to lick Steve’s face.

“That’s my dog,” Clint said and held the door opened for Steve to step inside. “His name is Lucky. He likes pizza.”

“Pizza?” Steve asked. He was fairly certain dogs weren’t supposed to eat pizza.

Lucky trailed after Steve, looking up at him and wagging his tail. It might have been a Golden Retriever? He was cute, Steve decided and reached down to pet his head.

“I’m more of a cat person.” Natasha was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at Steve with another one of her unreadable expressions.

“I like dogs,” Steve admitted. “They’re loyal, and they don’t put their claws in you.”

Natasha tsked him, and went back into the kitchen. Steve followed after her.

“Since I don’t want to fuck anything up or poison you, I’ve literally only put a turkey in the oven. I bought the cake.” She gestured to a box on the kitchen counter, and then promptly sat down to look into the oven. “When do you think it’s done?”

Steve shrugged. “I dunno. During thanksgiving with mom we never afforded a whole turkey. And when … she was gone, Winifred never allowed us in the kitchen while she cooked.”

“Winifred?” she asked casually, not taking her eyes from the turkey.

“Bucky’s mom, I spent Thanksgiving with his family when …”

“Hm.”

They fell quiet again, the two of them both staring at the turkey, like it could magically tell them when to take it out.

“Clint!” Natasha suddenly called, standing back up.

Clint appeared in the doorway right away. “Did someone call?”

“Yes,” Natasha said impatiently, “I can’t handle the turkey.” She did some rapid hand movements as she talked, and Clint stepped forward to take over the turkey-responsibility.

“You need to learn to cook some time,” Clint muttered under his breath. “I only know how to cook poison, she says. I don’t want to fuck the food up, she says.”

Steve looked at Natasha with an eyebrow raised, but she only shrugged.

Clint took out the turkey half an hour later, and they sat down at the table to eat.

“I’m thankful for my family and my dog. And Kate.”

“I’m thankful for my friends, and that I‘m alive. Also, that there isn’t an alien invasion on my birthday.”

Steve knew it was his turn, but he thought and he thought, but he couldn’t come up with a single thing he was thankful for. He wasn’t even thankful of being alive. Maybe … he was thankful that...

“Let’s cut the turkey,” Natasha said, as she must have noticed his uneasiness.

They ate in silence for a while, Steve feeling guilty because it had to be his fault. Couldn’t he just have pressed out something to be grateful for?

Clint, seemingly oblivious to how uncomfortable Steve was feeling, started up a casual conversation to fill the silence.

“How are you doing?” Natasha asked after they had eaten, when Clint took Lucky out for a quick walk.

“I’m fine,” Steve said stubbornly, almost believing it himself.

“Do you believe that yourself?” She was looking at him like she could see into his soul.

He hurriedly tried to find an excuse, and said, “I was thinking of visiting Peggy.”

Natasha stopped her stare and smiled, like she genuinely believed that was the reason she had to ask him if he was okay.. “That’s good.”

When Clint came back they ate the cake and Steve left shortly after.

~~~~~

Steve gathered himself enough to arrange a visit to Peggy during the second week of December. A nurse answered when he called, but she promised to make sure Peggy knew he was coming. She sounded a bit star-struck to Steve, but he chose to mostly ignore it.

“Steve?” Peggy asked in a weak voice as he walked in her room.

Steve had flown over to England and right away made his way over to her, and was feeling rather tired, like he’d worked off the little energy he’d had in the morning. Peggy wasn’t looking much better, her face was so wrinkly he wasn’t sure if she was frowning or not. Her hair was the same length as he remembered, splayed out over several pillows supporting up her weight. The desk beside her table were filled with pill bottles, but Steve forced himself not to look at them. He didn’t want to know how bad Peggy was, he just wanted to see her again.

“You’re alive!” It was heartbreaking how enthusiastic she wanted to be but couldn’t because her voice broke. “You … you came back.”

“Yeah, I did,” Steve said, not any stronger than her, and took her hand in his. She felt so fragile.

“It’s been so long, so long, Steve.” She was smiling, and Steve returned it, trying to get it to reach his eyes.

“I couldn’t—” The words choked in his throat, refusing to come out.

“Hey, Steve,” Peggy said calmly, putting her other hand above Steve’s. “How are you doing?”

“I—”

“Steve, how are you doing?” Peggy was more forceful now, like she realised he wasn’t even admitting it to himself.

“I thought…” Steve began, not knowing himself what he was going to admit. “I thought I was going to die, I made peace with it. And then I wake up, and the world is so full of … just so full. And aliens. How do you deal with this?”

Peggy looked at him with a sad frown, the beginnings of tears glistening in her eyes. “Steve.”

He closed his eyes, leaned his forehead down over their hands.

“It’s a process, dear. I can’t imagine, what you…” She sighed. “We can’t go back, we can only do our best. Sometimes the best that we can do is start over.”

“I can’t do that,” Steve said, and though he knew Peggy would barely be able to hear him, he couldn’t muster the energy to speak clearer. “Everyone knows Captain America. Everyone has an of idea what I should be. And I can’t even protest, because they’ve known me longer than I’ve known myself.”

Peggy gently patted his head, resting her hand in the crook of his neck. “That is not right, dear. They do not know you, and no one certainly knows you better than you do yourself.”

“But,” Steve protested weakly, “I barely know myself anymore. It’s easier to just … sink  into Captain America.”

“Steve, the best is never easy, you need to push.”

“I can’t!” Peggy stilled, waiting for his next words. “I have no energy anymore.”

She let him rest against his stomach for a while. He sat up abruptly when she went into a coughing fit, reaching for a glass of water. When she stopped coughing she was looking at him with the same wonder as she had when he had first entered the room.

“Steve? You’re alive, you … you came back.”

Steve forced himself to smile and said, “Yeah,” although he just wanted to cry. She’d forgotten. The nurse had warned him it might happen, but he never thought it would feel like this.

He stayed a little while longer, keeping the conversation light. There was no need to worry her.

Before he left, he locked himself in a bathroom and quietly let his tears fall.

~~~~~

Stark invited him over to Stark Tower — or as he said it was now, Avengers Tower — for Christmas. He would have turned it down, but Natasha, having gotten an identical invitation, knew he had been invited and forced him to accept. She said she wouldn’t have him alone on Christmas, and she would drag him there if she had to.

The day before Christmas he was just packing up to head home after a long day, when Commander Hill walked into him.

“Captain Rogers?” she asked. “What are you still doing here?”

“I was just heading home,” Steve said, finishing with the last.

“Congrats on making Level 8,” Hill said just before he was out of earshot, as if on afterthought.

“Level 8?” Steve asked. Last he checked he was still Level 7. And Level 8? That was just one step down from Commander Hill. Why would he be that high?

“Fury didn’t tell you?”

“Doesn’t seem so, ma’am.”

“Huh. Well, have a merry Christmas.”

“You too.”

He slept badly that night, and forced himself up early in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee before meeting up with Natasha to fly to New York together. Natasha looked chipper and like she had slept more than enough hours, but Steve knew she had stayed longer than him before going home. She was chewing on a croissant and was holding a Starbucks cup, a small suitcase standing beside her. She gave him a quick one armed hug and told him to hold the cup. She finished her croissant, took back her coffee and they walked down to the metro. When they arrived at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Natasha led him away from the usual waiting area.

“Where are we going?”

“Stark fixed a private plane for us.”

“Of course he did,” Steve muttered.

Shortly after they boarded, the plane was in the air.

“Couldn’t we just have taken commercial flight?” Steve asked from his seat opposite Natasha.

“Sure,” she said, looking down at her phone, “but where’s the fun in that?”

Steve dozed off for the main part of the hour it took to arrive at LaGuardia in New York. He blinked awake to Natasha gently shaking him.

“We’re about to land.”

“Oh.” Steve rubbed his eyes, trying to remove the feeling that they were filled with grit. He was actually surprised he’d managed to fall asleep on a such short trip. He must really have been tired. (He had barely slept the last week, and he had skipped a few breakfasts — because he was in a hurry — as this morning. Surely that wasn’t any reason why?)

Tony had a car waiting for them when they landed. Steve thought they’d be let out on the street outside the tower, but the car took them all the way inside, to some form of parking lot. Before they drove in, Steve could see many people milling on the street outside the tower, some of them seeming to be … dressed like some of the Avengers? Steve was sort of relieved not having to face them — not as Steve, it was always Captain America that had been good with crowds.

A woman in a pencil-skirt with strawberry blonde hair waited for them, introducing herself as Pepper Potts.

“Miss Potts,” Steve said when he shook her hand.

“Please call me Pepper.”

She led them into an elevator and up to the top floors. Immediately, as they stepped out they were bombarded with Christmas. There were decorations on any surface that could hold it, and the air was heavy with the smell of pine. Christmas music flowed softly out of speakers Steve couldn’t see, and in the middle of the room, dominating it, stood the biggest Christmas tree Steve had ever seen inside a building.

Tony was at the bar, pouring something — eggnog? — into small glasses, with Doctor Banner beside him overlooking the process. Clint was lounging on one of the couches with Thor.

“Bruce, go play with the kids,” Tony said swatting in the general direction of Banner.

Banner sighed, but stepped away from the bar and went toward Steve — Natasha had already made her way over to Clint.

“Feeling tense?” Banner asked, coming to a stop beside Steve, with his hands in his pockets. Steve startled, but before he could answer, Banner said, “Merry Christmas. And a late happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Banner — he quite liked him actually — but Steve could feel the uncomfort come creeping and settling over his shoulders like a blanket. He repressed a sigh of relief when Tony called for them to come forward to the bar.

“Here, drink up,” he said, handing out a glass to everyone. “Merry Christmas, fellow Avengers.”

Tony downed his, while Steve took small sips. It didn’t taste as much of alcohol as he had thought, but it was still there, teasing on his tongue. It had beens so longs since he could get drunk, and he missed it with a passion.

“Okay,” Tony said, clapping his hands together, “first we’ll have dinner, then  _ From all of us to all of you _ !”

“From all of— what?” Steve asked, not understanding what Tony was talking about.

“A crime, Rogers, a crime.” Tony tsked, shaking his head. “ _ From all of us to all of you _ is an important part of every Christmas. How can you not know what it is?”

“It was first shown in 58, Tony,” Banner said. “And it’s barely shown anymore.”

“Also a crime,” Tony said and then promptly turned to the ceiling. “Jarvis, dinner.”

“Right away, sir,” the ceiling replied.

Steve was fairly certain it wasn’t customary to name your ceiling in this century. Even if said ceiling could talk.

A door to the side opened and several people came bearing big plates filled to the brim with food, settling it all down on the table just to the side of the Christmas tree. Dominating the table was a big ham that needed two servers to be carried out.

They all sat down to eat, the air around the table filling with small talk, a distance hum in Steve’s ears as he picked some food, placed it on his plate, stared as long as he could before it was weird and then ate some — all before repeating the process. He didn’t feel like being involved in any talk, and he was grateful Natasha at least didn’t try. She had a very keen and accurate ability to sense when to really avoid something because it was making him feel too uneasy.

After dinner all they sat down in the cloudily soft couches with pie — “Apple pie because I didn’t get to serve it in July,” Tony said with a half glare at Steve, and Steve shrunk in on himself — to watch  _ From all of us to all of you _ . Steve perked up slightly at the Disney logo — he’d always liked their animated movies before the war, because the art was so beautiful, and had dragged Bucky with him to watch them at several occasions.

As the first part came on he perked up even more. He remembered loving  _ Santa’s Workshop _ when it came out in ‘32. He’d dragged Bucky to see it many times, and some with his mom too. Bucky had complained that they were too old for it, but Steve knew he secretly loved it too. Steve had been fourteen, Bucky fifteen, and Bucky hadn’t said a word about Santa not being real, or anything even remotely suggestive of not celebrating Christmas so it was stupid. Bucky had handled their religious differences the way Steve believed everyone should do.

( _ Bucky was dead. _ )

He recognized the clips from  _ Bambi _ ,  _ Pinocchio _ (“That’s you, Stevie.” “Shut up, Buck.”) and  _ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs _ (“You could be Grumpy, Buck.” “Hey, that’s not nice!”).

Tony sang along to Jiminy Cricket's  _ When You Wish Upon a Star _ , very offtune, and Steve huffed a laugh.

“Now, time for presents!” Tony exclaimed and stood up, both sounding and looking like a child on Christmas.

“Presents?” Steve asked before he could stop himself.

“Obviously. Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I guess I’m just not used to it.”

“Not used to it? How can you not be used to presents on Christmas?”

“Me ‘n’ Buck barely had money for food sometimes, and me and mom weren’t better off before that, do you really think we could afford presents? Plus, Bucky was Jewish. Christmas has always been about spending time with your family for me.”

“Ugh, growing up poor,” Tony said and shuddered.

Steve automatically responded, “It’s not that bad,” but if he really thought about it, it sorta was. But he would never regret or say he didn't like the closeness it brought you with your family.

Natasha gave Steve and Clint two identical bracelets with the letter BFF on them. Or, when Steve looked closer, they weren’t identical. They looked like they were meant to be, but whoever had done them hadn’t exactly succeeded.

“Did you do these yourself?” he asked her, so surprised he didn’t know what else to say.

Natasha smirked and didn’t give him an answer. He took it as a yes.

Tony gave him … clothes. “Grandpa clothes for the grandpa,” Tony said and laughed. Steve frowned.

In the midst of it all, miss Potts — Pepper — walked up to him, a carefully and beautifully wrapped parcel in her hands. “I hope you will like it,” she said when she handed it over, sounding almost … nervous?

Mindful of the effort it must have taken to wrap the gift, he opened the paper to reveal a painting in a discreet frame, leaving all focus to the motif.

“Where did you find this?” Steve asked, barely noticing that his voice sounded like a normal person had run a marathon.

“I was looking for something of Brooklyn from a time you would have remembered. Everyone needs a little art in their life. It wasn’t all that easy to find something that really spoke to me, but this one…”

It was a painting of the Brooklyn skyline under a setting sun, painting the houses in a mysterious sheen. Over the glass, he trailed his fingers over the familiar forms of the buildings, the curve of the Brooklyn Bridge over the front of the painting.

“It was a pity the artist was unknown,” Pepper said with a sigh, breaking Steve out of his haze. “Can you tell if it’s from the forties?”

“Yes,” Steve breathed. “I was paid in 1941 to paint it, but I wasn't paid to be the artist behind it."

“You’re an artist?” she asked, delight and surprise evident in her voice.

“I haven’t painted anything in a very long time.” Steve let his eyes roam over the painting slowly. “This day me and Bucky took a trip over to Manhattan. I sketched up a draft of it during the sunset,and when we got home, Bucky helped me mix the colours to the right tint. I was colourblind back then.”

“It’s very beautiful.”

“I never really thought I’d see it again when I handed it over. It was a very happy day, me and Buck had-” He stopped himself before he could say they'd been on their first date that day in June. It wasn’t that he thought Pepper would mind, but the memory somehow felt so private and raw. “Thank you,” he settled for saying, “for finding this.”

With both Natasha's and Pepper’s presents in mind he felt suddenly very bad for having nothing in return to give them. He was grateful, he really was, and he wanted to show them that, but he didn’t know how.

“It’s my pleasure,” Pepper smiled. “Tony has no interest in art at all, it pleases me to have someone with an interest in art.”

When Pepper had walked off to join Tony, Natasha walked over to Steve.

“Look,” she said and held out her arm with a BFF bracelet around the wrist, “I gave you something  _ I’ve _ done, not something you have done. Aren’t I better? Say I’m better.” She was smiling playfully, bumping her shoulder into his, and he huffed out another small laugh.

“You’re the best, Nat,” he said, but his voice didn’t hold as much warmth as he wanted. There was something akin to apathy in there, and he was glad Natasha didn’t point it out.

“So, have you had any progress in the dating department?” Natasha said, changing the subject. She must have sensed his unease — not that the new subject was any better.

“You know I haven’t been on any dates.”

“I’m just gonna have to fix that, am I?”

_ Please don’t _ , Steve thought, but he didn’t say anything.

Feeling more and more out of his comfort zone as the evening processed — (Bucky would have fixed that, with Bucky he could have stayed all night) — Steve shrunk in on himself. Finally he decided he’d have enough, and told Natasha he was retreating for the night and left the room. Tony had told them earlier that he had given them all a room each to stay the night, and that’s where Steve went. Jarvis-the-talking-ceiling — whom Tony had said was his AI butler, whatever that meant — helped him find the way to the right door.

Steve was pretty sure Tony didn’t know what ‘room’ meant. The ‘room’ was at least the size of an apartment. It had a fully equipped kitchen, a living area with a big flat screen tv, a bathroom with both a bath and a shower, and a bedroom with a big king sized bed. The windows in the living area were big and looked out over the city, and in the distance Brooklyn could be seen.

He went and layed down in the bed, feeling like he was going to sink right through the mattress down to the floor. He didn’t get much sleep.

“Did you like the room? “ Tony asked when Steve emerged from the room the next morning to eat breakfast in the room from yesterday. Jarvis had told him to go there. “You can move in anytime you like.”

“I’ll stay in D.C.” Steve said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Ain’t that just too bad,” Tony sighed and placed a plate in front of Steve.

Steve stared down at it for a moment before processing what it was. It was filled to the brim with eggs, sausages and a few slices of toast.

“What are you staring for? Eat.”

Steve finished off his plate quicker than he thought he would, and Tony silently replaced it with another, just as full, plate.

Later that day, after Natasha had woken up, they flew back to D.C. They rode the metro together, and when they stepped off Natasha said, “I’ll walk you home.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve said and starting walking in the direction of the Triskelion. “I’m gonna go do a little work.”

Natasha looked disapprovingly at him, but knowing she couldn’t possibly stop him, she sighed and said goodbye. Steve watched her go, feeling bad because he knew he had disappointed her in some way.

He stayed working into the late hours, telling himself he would do just a little more work before going home. He woke up when the first agents started arriving.

~~~~~

He hung up the painting on the wall opposite his bed so he could see it every morning as a remind of the happy memory it represented.

~~~~~

It didn’t work in getting him happy.

~~~~~

The third woman Natasha set him up with liked it, however. But, it turned out to be a bad idea bringing her home (it had been late, and snowing heavily, he thought he was being deceant). She left angrily when he didn’t want to invite her to his bed.

She wasn’t even a good kisser. He could only think of Bucky.

~~~~~

Whenever there was a mission where they wanted to send in as few people as possible, but wanted a lot of manpower, he was their go to guy.

There was a lot of them.

He came back out of every mission hurt in some way. Maybe he could have avoided some of the injuries.

(Who was he kidding? He could have avoided almost  _ all _ of them. Because: maybe there was a bullet, and didn't he really notice it a few seconds earlier? And that knife, hadn't he already seen it in the person's hand? And those punches, maybe he could have actually knocked the person out?)

(He willingly let himself get hurt, but it was easier to think of it as unavoidable - that way he could still pretend he wasn't broken beyond repair.)

~~~~~

In February he visited the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. He put on a hoodie and pulled a cap over his head, and hoped to melt into the crowd.

_ Captain America — The Living legend and Symbol of Courage _ it said on the entrance. Steve tried not to look at it. He kept his head down as he walked, listening to a narrator say, “ _ A symbol to the nation. A hero to the world. The story of Captain America is one of honour, bravery and sacrifice. _ ” He hunched up his shoulders, shrinking in on himself.

He walked around, looking at all displays, the familiar things he’d mostly seen just over a year ago. It had gone so little time. His bike was there, looking to be in perfect condition. In a big display were recreations of all Howling Commando outfits. At least something wasn’t all about him.

_ A fallen comrade _ read a single panel dedicated to Bucky. He looked at the pixelated picture of Bucky’s face for a long time, before he moved on to the text and frowned. Bucky wasn’t born in 1916, he was born in 1917, on March 10th.

On a screen beside the display played footage from the war time on repeat. He remember them, it had been promotional films depicting the work the Howling Commandos did. He looked at a short sequence of him and Bucky laughing beside each other. He couldn’t remember the joke, but he could remember the immense feeling of love that had almost overwhelmed him at the time.

A little bit away where another display of things in a glass case, with the title  _ The home life of a legend _ . There were photos of their old block, the building they had lived in placed in the corner of the picture. Random memorial from their home had been put up, including one item set off to the side of the others.  _ Drafting letter _ said a short text beside the paper.  _ Found in the drawers of the Barnes-Rogers household, was a letter drafting one James Buchanan Barnes to the U.S. Army. _

With startling realisation Steve found it all made sense.  _ 3 _ 2557038, Bucky’s unwillingness to have Steve fight, and how rarely he talked about enlisting, like he wanted to avoid the subject at all cost.

_ Bucky! _ .

Yes, Steve had badly wanted to join the army, but he didn’t want that to mean Bucky felt he had to be dishonest with Steve. Objectively he could understand why Bucky had held it from him — had Steve found out he would most likely have thrown a fit that Bucky  _ didn’t _ want to join but still got to do it when Steve wanted to but wasn’t allowed.

_ How _ could he possibly have missed it? He thought he had known Bucky to the core, and it had been there in his serial number all the time. Drafted. He must have been in denial, he thought, must have used what he most wanted to believe to skew reality so he could understand it. He had never understood those who didn't want to fight for people's freedom, and especially those who wanted to take freedom away from other people. He didn't feel less for Bucky, and now in hindsight, maybe if Bucky had never had to join the army they could both be alive and happy now.

He tore himself away. It never ended well dwelling on a past that couldn't be changed. In that Peggy was right.

In a quiet room a screening of Peggy talking was showin on loop. With only two other people in there, Steve sat down and waited for it to get back to the beginning.

“ _ That was a difficult winter _ ,” Peggy on the screen said. “ _ A blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Steve … Captain America, he fought his way through a Hydra blockade that had pinned our allies down for a month. He saved over a thousand men, including the man who would … who would become my husband as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life. _ ”

Steve looked down at his compass, staring at the picture of Peggy. Miraculously they had found it in the plane, even though it should have been swept away by the ice that drowned Steve. That should have drowned him.

He closed the familiar shape, and put it back in his pocket, but lingered his hand on it. There was both Peggy and Bucky in the shape of the compass, both their memory strong on the little object.

He took his hand out of the pocket and walked out. The sun was glaring down at him, lighting the snow like a beacon. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to take in only the warmth of the sun.

The cold still glared at him. He hated the cold.

(He was afraid of the cold.)

~~~~~

After the twelfth failed date, Natasha introduced him to a SHIELD agent. The result was the same. Everyone still only wanted Captain America.

~~~~~

Steve didn’t mean to overhear, or appear like he was eavesdropping. Hill and Fury were discussing who to send on a mission. Something about  a hostile situation and July 4th. He could see why that might be hard to assign people. All agents took their job serious, but no one really wanted to work on Independence Day. Except, Steve did.

He loomed outside the door, trying to assess if the repercussions of revealing he’d overheard would be worth telling them he could go.

Making his decision he stepped just inside and said, “I volunteer.”

Hill and Fury looked up at him, Fury with an unreadable expression and Hill with a frown.

“Captain Rogers,” Hill began, but Fury held up a hand to silence her.

“Why?”

Steve shrugged and said, “Someone has to, and I bet a lot of SHIELD’s agents have families they want to spend time with.” Something was stopping him from telling the real reason — he wanted an excuse to stay away from any kind of celebration, especially the kind that involved fireworks. He didn’t care that it was his birthday, he’d done fine on his own last year, and he didn’t need anything more this year.

“But,” Hill protested but cut herself off with a sigh. “It would spare us quite some trouble.”

“Then that’s decided,” Fury said, standing up. “Mission debriefing 0800 on July 4th. We don’t want any information to have a chance of leaking out.”

Steve dragged himself out of bed at six on the 4th. He gulped down enough coffee to wake him up and ate a piece of bread on his way down the apartment building. He drove his Harley through the morning traffic, arriving at the Triskelion at a quarter past seven. He parked and made his way to change into the suit. During the time since the battle of New York, his costume had been modified to better fit with the type of ops he went on. It was significantly darker, the red completely removed except a little on the side, and the blue a darker, more grey tinted tone. The star was in place, but that was also about the only thing that had really stayed the same — aside from the shield, though it’s colours had been matted down for the mission.

One of the quinjets were ready for mission when he arrived out, and since he hadn’t seen anyone on his way here, he steered his steps towards it. Someone was readying for mission inside, and he stepped in. The person looked up at his steps and he did a double take.

“Natasha? What are you doing here?”

“Mission,” she said, and went back to checking her weapons.

“You know what I mean. Why aren’t you having the day off?”

“I’m Russian.” Her eyes were on the weapons, and when he didn’t say anything she said, “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Someone has to.”

“I’m not that stupid, Rogers,” she said, looking up at him. “I don’t buy your bullshit.”

He was saved from having to answer by Rumlow and his Strike team approaching. The men set into preparations, and Rumlow readyed a screen for briefing.

“The mission is hostile saving,” he said, producing a picture of the man. “The hostile is a SHIELD agent, and according to our intell will be sold on the black market sometime at eleven today. Buying party will have six men, selling will be two men. It’s crucial we don’t reveal ourselves until both parties are present. We need intel from both sides. No casualties are preferable. Questions?”

Steve didn’t like the way with which Rumlow always talked about ‘casualties’, and honestly he didn’t really like the guy at all.

“Why is he being sold on the black market?” Natasha asked, voicing the question Steve didn’t dare ask. Rumlow always seemed so gleeful every time Steve asked that Rumlow could bask in that he knew. Natasha had noticed it early on, and always seemed to know what he wanted to ask. He liked it. (He didn’t like what it meant for other things he tried to keep hidden even from himself.)

“Intel is scarce on that,” Rumlow answered abruptly and turned away from them.

They left the quinjet a good distance away from the meeting point — with the pilot on standby to take of right away when they needed to — and slowly approached. There was no one to see them, but it didn’t hurt to be careful, and they couldn’t alert them that someone was there when they did arrive for the exchange. Rumlow set his Strike team in position, and Steve and Natasha found a spot where they clearly saw the whole inside of the building.

At eleven on the dot, a single man walked in, dragging a chain behind him. At the other end of the chain was the agent they were to save, bound at both feet and hands. The man dragged him into the center of the room and waited, standing just behind him with the chain pulled taut.

The agent looked like Bucky.

He gulped in a breath, and another when that didn’t seem to be enough. Knowing he had to stay quiet was just stressing him more, because he couldn’t seem to get enough air no matter what he did. Was he having an asthma attack? But the serum… the serum shouldn’t allow that! Was it failing? But—

“Steve,” Natasha asked, her voice barely above a whisper as it carried over to him and past the humming in his ears, “are you okay?”

“He looks like Bucky,” he whimpered because he couldn’t bother with how she saw him right now. He needed air!

“Hey,” she said calmly, reassuring. “Listen to me breath. Follow it.”

Slowly, he matched his breathing to hers, and he could get air again. The world around him snapped back into focus — he hadn’t even noticed that it had started swaying.

The Agent didn’t actually look like Bucky.

“What happened?” he asked shakily. “I thought I couldn’t get asthma attacks with the serum.”

“Not asthma,” Natasha said, eyeing Rumlow to gauge whether he seemed to have noticed anything. “Panic. It’s not that strange with your … situation. We’re talking about this when the mission is over. No buts.” She added determinedly when she noticed him beginning to protest. “I just want you to be feeling okay.”

The next moment five men entered the building, and Steve went into battle stance, waiting to attack at the right moment. When the men came to a stop close to the other man to make the exchange, Steve whispered into the com, “Okay, go,” and threw his shield at the man holding the agent.

The man went down, almost knocked out. Steve ignored him, since he wouldn’t be of any problem in the fight, and turned to the other five men. They had all drawn weapons, trained at Steve. Then Natasha was there and took out one, and Steve set into motion. One of the Strike team took out a third man, and Steve knocked out his to turn to the two remaining, one already fighting with Natasha. Behind Steve the strike team extracted the agent, and with one last punch all men were down.

That’s when it all went south.

In through the door came ten men, surprising them all. Rumlow yelled out orders and two men removed the agent, the rest of the Strike team staying to take out the new men. The fight turned bloody, and Steve got a great amount of blood over the front of his costume. Sounds of bullets rang out in the building as the new men became desperate to win the fight. In the midst of it all, Steve didn’t notice the bullet coming from behind until it had already hit him. He felt it detached, tearing through his flesh. The pain was dull, nothing he couldn’t handle, so he kept on fighting. The man whom he’d thought he’d knocked out with the shield was holding a gun in his hand, aiming at Natasha now. Before he could fire Steve jumped him, knocking him out for real this time.

When the fight was over, the strike team went about binding the men to take back as prisoners, while Steve and Natasha walked back to the quinjet to make sure the agent was okay.

He was sitting in the plane, fully conscious, and looked to be in full health. When Natasha asked if he was hurt he shook his head. With the Strike team arriving shortly after, the quinjet took off back to base.

Steve sat down with Natasha to the side of the others, looking her over to make sure she wasn’t hurt. “Are you okay?”

“Yup,” she replied with a smile, “those bastards hardly knew how to fight. And you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, “the others just bled a little over me.” He shifted to sit back in his seat more comfortably, and had to hide a winch. It hurt.

But he was okay, nothing that couldn’t be healed. The serum would work it out.

After about ten minutes, he could feel how each breath he took brought him less and less oxygen. It didn’t help to breath deeper, and each breath pressed and hurt on where he knew the shot wound was. He was thankful Natasha was sitting to his left, because maybe then she wouldn’t notice. He was pretty sure the wound was bleeding again, both the exit and entry wound.

Slowly, the pain grew in intensity, and each breath he took felt like someone was squeezing his lung as he tried to fill it with air, a hundred times worse than any asthma attack he had ever had. To add to it, he felt his heart beat race quicker, recognising it as his blood pressure dropping from all the times it had happened to him before.

Maybe he wasn’t completely fine?

“Steve?!” He blinked and found Natasha staring down at him, snapping her fingers in front of his face. She was standing above him, her whole face scrunched up in worry, which he could see clearly even from his place on the floor.

Wait, when had he ended up on the floor?

“Where?” Natasha growled, suddenly all up in his face.

“Wha...” Steve’s head was swimming, and his view of the world was turning white-hot.

Detached from the world around him, Steve noticed how Natasha was cutting in his costume, revealing his chest and she winched.

“Exit wound. Dammit, Steve.”

Something cold was pressed over his wound, plastic he thought, and Natasha yelled, “Rumlow, we need medical when we land! Collapsed lung, entry and exit wound!”  The she did something and the plastic was staying in place when she let go of it and rolled over over to his right side, making his side feel like it was catching on fire (he should know, it had happened once). She then pressed something cold to his back, right over where the bullet had entered.

“You’ll be okay, Steve,” he heard Natasha say. “You’re going into shock, but we’ll land soon, and you have to serum.”

He thought he heard her say, “You have to be okay,” but he might just as well have imagined it.

The quinjet gave a shake, indicating they had landed, and then medics were there, filling the space around him. A needle was inserted in his chest, he got a mask over his mouth, and more needle sticks in his arm.

The world was white-hot light and searing with pain, and he wanted it all gone.

~~~~~

He woke up.

(He didn’t open his eyes, and hoped it wasn’t happening.)

He opened his eyes.

He was alive, in a hospital room, with a tube sticking out of the right side if his chest. He wanted…

(He wanted all of this to not be real. He wanted deah.)

Natasha was at his side, staring furiously at him. “You— you god damned…”

Oh. She was mad at him.

He was sorry he had woken up.

“I thought,” Natasha said, having to stop to take a breath to cool down her anger. “I thought you might actually die.”

Oh. She wasn’t mad he had woken up?

“No, of fucking course I’m not, you fucking idiot.” Oh, he’d said it out loud?

“I know the serum makes you heal a lot better, but you’re not invincible, Rogers.”

“Sorry,” he croaked out.

“It’s not me you should say sorry to.”

“Who then?” he asked, slowly so his throat didn’t hurt.

She muttered something under her breath angrily and then took a deep breath as if to calm herself. “Yourself. You almost died.”

“Oh,” Steve responded. He didn’t know what else to say.

“You need to start taking better care of yourself.”

“I’m fine, Natasha.”

“Obviously not.”

“I am now,” he said fiercely, sitting up slightly to get more force when he looked back at her.

“You worried the others,” Natasha settled for saying. “Tony flew over from Malibu.”

“I’m okay, Natasha,” he said, noticing the undercurrent of her worry.

“You were out for days, Steve.” She gave him a quick hug before sitting back. “The doctors… they couldn’t do anything but wait for you to wake up. The serum made that they couldn’t predict the healing process. You broke a few ribs, and they healed wrong so they had to go in and break them so they could heal correctly.”

They fell into a silent at least Steve found uncomfortable.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought it was okay,” Steve said pathetically, not wanting Natasha to get mad at him again. “We had other things to worry about. And if I could survive … survive in the ice for so long, then a little bullet wound shouldn’t be any problem, right?”

“Of course it would,” Natasha hissed.

“Well, I didn’t think so.”

They fell back into silence, which Natasha broke with, “It’s not going to help your tragic love life. Have were you thinking you could date when you’re lying in a hospital bed?”

“Thought I won’t.”

“Now that’s just tragic, Steve.” She was smiling though, and he counted that as a win.

~~~~~

Before he was released, Tony came by, probably after Natasha had told him Steve had woken up.

“Wow, Big Guy,” Tony said when he walked into Steve’s room, “you’re not, you know, invincible. Though, I could probably fix that.” He added the last bit as an afterthought, but Steve stopped him before he could get too far.

“No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Oh well, anytime you change your mind, you’ve got my number.”

“Okay, Tony.” Steve was still feeling … (down, weak, useless) too much of the aftermath of the shot, but he forced out a smile regardless. Tony must really have worried about him.

~~~~~

Natasha wanted him to see a therapist. He went once, to humor her. He didn’t come back. She didn’t say anything more about it again.

~~~~~

Natasha kept a lot closer lookout for him after the July 4th mission. She coaxed him into inviting her over to his apartment after work many times. He didn’t exactly mind spending time with her, but she worried too much.

This one time when they went up the stairs to his floor, the door across the hall from his opened, just as they were stepping past. The door banged up and the corner hit him in the face. On the other side a distressed sound was heard and the next moment a woman with blonde wavy hair and wearing scrubs stepped into his view — distantly he thought he might have seen her before.

“I’m so sorry,” she said and dropped a basket of laundry to the floor. “I was in a hurry, and I didn’t think-”

“It’s no worry,” Steve assured her. Really, the door wouldn’t even leave a mark — maybe  _ he’d _ leave a mark on the  _ door _ .

“I’m Kate,”the woman said, extending her hand to him. “I just came of a shift, and I have to do some laundry quickly before my next shift. I work as a nurse,” she added as an afterthought, like it wasn’t already obvious. She must have been feeling bad about hitting him.

“I can assure you,” Natasha said, butting into the conversation, “he’s handled worse. It’s nothing to worry about.” She threw him a look, but Steve chose to ignore it.

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Kate sighed in said relief. “I have to go now, but I’m still very sorry.”

“You haven’t mentioned her before,” Natasha said when they’d entered his apartment and he had closed the door behind them.

“No.”

“C’mon, Rogers, humor me. She seems nice.”

“I haven’t really seen her before,” Steve said resigned and moved to the kitchen. “I think  she’s new,” he shot over his shoulder.

 


	5. Chapter 5

During the winter he set up a habit for his morning jogs; he ran past the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the National WW2 Memorial and Lincoln Memorial. In the frigid winter morning weather not many others were out running, even though during the summer had seen a lot of people. There was a few guys running, but only one he saw every morning. Over the span of the holidays all way over to February, he ran past the guy as he did his several laps. (He had to do many laps to actually burn out any energy.)

~~~~~

It was March by the time they first spoke. Steve was on his second lap, having already ran past the guy once. He must have heard his footfalls, because he looked back, and when he saw Steve he said, “Oh, not again!” but with a manner that made Steve sure he wasn’t serious.

When Steve ran past him he said, “On your left.”

~~~~~

In April the trees along his route bloomed in a pink intensity. It was so pretty that it took him twice as long to run his usual laps, and he only got to say, “On your left,” thrice each day for the period of the blooming.

~~~~~

One day in May when he passed the man at Thomas Jefferson Memorial, he said, “Uh-huh, on my left. Got it,” as reply to Steve’s, “On your left.”

The next time he came up from behind, the man fiercely said,” Don’t say it! Don’t you dare say it.”

Steve did anyway. “On your left.” And the he ran straight past him as they rounded Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

“Come on!” the man shouted after him.

When he next saw him after another lap, the man was sitting on the ground, his back leaned against the trunk of a tree, panting hard with a hand on his chest.

“Need a medic?” Steve asked, the first thing he had said to the man aside from “on your left”.

The man laughed and said, “I need a new set of lungs. Dude, you just ran, like, thirteen miles in thirty minutes.”

“Guess I got a late start,” Steve said, knowing he could run longer, quicker.

“Oh, really?” the man said with a chuckle. “You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take another lap.” The man was so evidently joking that Steve couldn’t help but smile. There was something about him that sparked something inside Steve. Something that made him want to laugh and smile, although small. “Did you just take it? I assume you just took it.”

“What unit were you with?” Steve asked, pointing at the symbol on the guys sweaty sweatshirt.

“58th Pararescue,” the man answered. “But now I’m working down at the VA.”

Steve nodded.

“Sam Wilson,” the man said and stretched his arm up.

Steve took his hand and helped dragging him up. “Steve Rogers.”

“I kind of put that together,” Sam said, panting. “Must have freaked you out, coming home after the whole defrostin’ thing.”

Sam had no idea how spot on he was. Steve sighed and said, “It takes some getting used to.” And he still wasn’t there yet, and he probably never would — living a life without Bucky was too strange. “It’s good to meet you, Sam,” he then said, and turned to leave. He had a job he needed to head to if he didn’t want to be late in.

“It’s your bed, right?”

“What’s that?” Steve asked and turned back around.

“Your bed, it’s too soft,” Sam said. “When I was over there, I’d sleep on the ground, use rock for pillows, like a caveman. Now I’m home, lyin’ in my bed, and it’s like...”

“Lying on a marshmallow,” Steve contributed when Sam seemed lost for the correct word to describe it. “I feel like I’m gonna sink right to the floor.”

Truth was, Steve had never had a soft bed. Didn’t matter if it was Steve with or without the serum, he wouldn’t feel home in this century as long as he had a soft bed to sleep in. Maybe Steve without the serum would have slept better in a soft bed, but that would have been in his century, not now.

Sam huffed, and nodded his head.

“How long,” Steve asked.

“Two tours,” Sam said, his voice more subdued now. “You must miss the good ol’ days, huh?”

“Well,” Steve said, plastering on a smile, “things aren’t so bad. Food’s a lot better. We used to boil everything. No polio is good. Internet, so helpful. I’ve been reading that a lot, trying to catch up.” All that he said, it was true, he really did think so. But at the same time… He’d left behind everyone he knew, and those ‘good old days’ were a time when he still had Bucky.

(Bucky was dead!)

Sam was back to smiling a big smile by now. “Marvin Gaye, 1972, Trouble Man</i< soundtrack. Everything you missed, jammed into one album.”

“I’ll put it on the list.”

He pulled out his small notebook, and under all the other things — I love Lucy; Moon landing; Berlin wall (up+down); Steve Jobs (Apple); Disco; Thai food; Star Wars/Trek (Star Wars he had already found time to watch; Nirvana (band); Rocky (Rocky II?) — scribbled down Sam’s suggestion.

As he put the notebook away, his SHIELD phone bussed at an incoming message. Taking it out, he saw a message from Natasha. MISSION ALERT. EXTRACTION IMMINENT. MEET AT THE CURB. :)

“Alright, Sam, duty calls,” he said and looked back up at Sam. “Thanks for the run. If that’s what you wanna call running.”

Sam looked at him in mock offence. “Oh, that’s how it is?”

“Oh, that’s how it is,” Steve replied while shaking Sam’s hand.

“Okay,” Sam laughed. “Any time you wanna step by the VA, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk, just let me know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Right then, a black sport car — looking so modern Steve sometimes had to remind himself it was actually real — stopped at the curb and rolled down the window on the passenger side.

“Hi, fellas,” Natasha said. “Either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I’m here to pick up a fossil.”

“That’s hilarious,” Steve deadpanned and walked to the car, and sat down in the passenger seat.

Outside, Sam sank into a squatting position, looking in through the window. “How you doin’?”

“Hey,” Natasha said as the only form of response.

Steve looked back out the window at Sam. “Can’t run everywhere.”

“No, you can’t,” Sam responded with a smile, and just a moment later Natasha pressed down the gas pedal and the car swerved away from the curb with its tyres screeching.

“You made a friend.”

“Yeah, he’s nice. Takes a morning jog at the same time every day, and he works down at the VA.”

“Keep him,” Natasha said, and just like that he knew Natasha both approved of and liked Sam.

~~~~~

Natasha took him to the Triskelion, where they, after having quickly changed into their uniforms, boarded a quinjet. It took off shortly after, and although they flew at higher speeds that normal planes — just over an hour — when taking into regard the timezones, it was late in evening when they neared the Indian Ocean. Only then did Rumlow ready mission debrief.

“The target is a mobile satellite launch platform, the Lemurian Star. They were sending up their last payload when pirates took them, 93 minutes ago.”

“Any demands?” Steve asked.

“Billion and a half,” Rumlow answered

“Why so steep?” Something was wrong if pirates wanted that much money for it.

“Because it’s SHIELD’s.”

That explained it. “So it’s not off-course, it’s trespassing.”

“I’m sure they have a good reason,” Natasha said into her hand before looking up at Steve.

“You know, I’m getting real tired of being Fury’s janitor.” He always had to clean up messes that could have been avoided if only SHIELD acted differently.

“Relax,” Natasha said, now looking at the screen. “It’s not that complicated.”

“How many pirates?” Steve asked Rumlow instead of answering Natasha.

“25, top merchs, led by this guy.” He showed a picture of a man on the screen. “George Batroc. Ex-DGSE, Action Division. He's at the top of Interpol's Red Notice. Before the French demobilized him, he had 36 kill missions. This guy's got a rep for maximum casualties.”

“Hostages?” Steve asked.

“Uh, mostly techs,” Rumlow answered, sweeping through the pictures on the screen before showing on of them. “One officer, Jasper Sitwell. They’re in the galley.”

“What’s Sitwell doing on a launch ship?” Steve asked, mostly to himself, putting on his gloves. “All right, I’m gonna sweep the deck and find Batroc. Nat, you kill the engine and wait for instructions. Rumlow, you sweep after, find the hostages, get ‘em to life-pods, get ‘em out. Let’s move.”

“Strike, you heard the Captain, gear up!” Rumlow told his team as Steve made himself ready to jump out.

“Secure channel seven,” Steve said into his com, and Natasha replied with a, “Seven secure,” through her own com.

“You do anything fun Saturday night?” Natasha asked casually, keeping up her habit of talking about non-mission related things the moments before engaging into a mission.

“All the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so… No, not really.”

Over the quinjet radio the pilot said, “Coming up on the dropzone, Cap,” so Steve hit the button and opened the loading ramp.

“You know,” Natasha continued, “if you asked Kristen out, from Statistics, she’d probably say yes.”

That’s why I don’t ask,” Steve replied, raising his voice to be heard over the howling of the wind while fitting on the shield and his helmet

“Too shy or too scared?” Natasha shouted back at him.

“Too busy,” Steve replied, although he wasn’t really interested either, and jumped off the ramp.

He was pretty sure he heard the, “Was he wearing a parachute?” before the wind made any sounds from the quinjet impossible to hear. The answer was no, he wasn’t wearing a parachute. Mostly because it was in the way if he was going to be able to fit the shield on his back. And he’d done this before, it wasn’t going to hurt him. He had the water to land in, and without the parachute he would be harder to detect.

The water was cold when it enveloped him, dragged him down into its depths. For a moment there was fear and panic (ice was filling in around him, forcing its way down his throat, chilling his stomach from within, clogging up his lungs—) then he pushed it down deep and swam to the surface. There he searched for the anchor chain and began to climb.

Silently he jumped over the railing, his feet barely making a sound when they landed on the deck behind one of the pirates. Before he had time to react, Steve grabbed him around the neck, squeezing until he lost consciousness, and then laid him down. As long as he kept quiet he had the moment of surprise on his side.

Running around the corner on the deck, he hurled his shield into on man, ducked under a rope and grabbed the other man’s legs. When he stretched out into standing again, he grabbed the shield and threw it on the man, knocking him out too. Three of twenty five pirates down. The next he came upon, he had one kicked over the railing before the others had time to notice. The two others attacked, but with a series of punches and kicks they were knocked out too.

As he ran towards the next group he knocked another over the railing, and went into a somersault towards the closest pirate who hadn’t even noticed the screams as his comrade went over the edge. As he began the fighting with this man, a second one ran towards him, but he kicked him to the side into a wall. When he turned back to the first man, the man was holding a knife that he attacked Steve with. Just as he had that man knocked out, he noticed a movement. To stop the second man from ringing the fire alarm he threw the knife, and it lodged through the man’s hand into the wall of the ship. In the motion of running past him, he kicked the man to the ground where he stayed.

The next group took him slightly longer, two of them knocked out quickly, but another two needing several hits with the shield. A man a distance away he knocked out with a throw of the shield, and before it returned fighting of yet another man. The shield returned and he used that to fight of another man who came up from a ladder, and then hit one of the previous men who had recovered. Just as he let the arm holding the shield fall down to his side, a gun cocked behind him.

“Don’t move!” a pirate told him in french.

Though before he could do anything, there was the sound of a bullet hitting its target came from behind, and the next moment Rumlow landed on deck.

“Thanks,” Steve said, only because it made Rumlow slightly more bearable to work with.

“Yeah, you seemed pretty helpless without me.”

Two more agents and Natasha landed on the deck, and Steve took off in search for Batroc. Natasha followed after him, shedding her parachute as she walked.

“What about the nurse that live across the hall from you? She seems kind of nice.”

Steve sighed. “Secure the engine room, then find me a date.”

“I’m multitasking,” Natasha replied and jumped over a railing down to a lower level of the deck.

Steve took of running again, jumping up on a stair-railing and shooting of, pushing off on the wall to get up fast. There, he held himself still and steady, and fired one of the listening devices to the glass of the control room.

“I don’t like waiting,” Steve heard Batroc say in french. “Call Durand. I want this ship ready to move when the ransom comes.”

“Yes, Batroc,” another replied. “Durand, start the engine.”

Steve moved down to safer ground to wait for everyone to report back. Moments later, the pirate from the control room said, “Radio silence from SHIELD, Batroc,” through the listening device.

A minute later, “Strike in position,” came over his com.

“Natasha, what’s your status?” Steve asked into his own com. “Status, Natasha,” he added when he got no reply.

“Hang on!” she replied to him, with sounds of fighting coming from her end. Then, “Engine room secure.”

“On my mark,” Steve said into his com, addressing everyone on the team. “Three… two… one.” Right on cue, gunfire was heard, and Steve readied his own attack.

He jumped up to a good vantage point, and when Batroc stood with his back to the windows, threw the shield at him. It knocked out the other pirate and lodged into the wall — Batroc had ducked. Steve jumped in after the shield, and was taken by surprise when Batroc kicked him in the sternum when he landed. Bartoc took off running, and when Steve had righted himself he took up the chase after having retrieved the shield. Batroc wasn’t going to get away that easy.

“Hostages en route to extraction,” Rumlow said over the com while Steve was looking for Batroc. “Romanoff missed the rendezvous point, Cap. Hostiles are still in play.”

Sighing frustrated, Steve said into the com to Natasha, “Natasha, Batroc’s on the move. Circle back to Rumlow and protect the hostages. Natasha?”

Before he could think any deeper on why Natasha wasn’t answering, Batroc attacked him. Steve raised his shield to fend off the jumping attack, and was sent to the ground where he did a somersault back up to standing. Batroc kept attacking, relentless. Steve had to scoot back to narrowly avoid a sure downward kick meant for his crotch. Batroc quickly got back up, kicking out as he did so. Steve somersaulted under him to come out standing on his other side. Batroc walked forward with a flurry of kicks and punches, forcing Steve to move backwards. Counterattacking, he punched the whole shield forward and sent Batroc flying several feet back. Jumping back up, Batroc charged at him with more kicks and punches, once again forcing Steve back. Steve grabbed Batroc’s shoulder and kneed him several times in the abdomen before throwing him backwards. Batroc took it with several somersaults of his own, coming out standing up.

“I thought you were more than just a shield,” Batroc taunted.

Steve took the shield off his arm, placed it on the holster on his back, and reached up to unfasten his helmet.

“Let’s see,” Steve replied in French and threw it to the side.

Steve met Batroc’s flurry of punches and kicks with his own, relishing in the fight with an opponent that could fight back. Eventually though, Steve got the upper hand, and with a flipping quick sent Batroc to the floor. He was slow to get back up, obviously shaken from the fighting. When he was standing, Steve charged at him, grabbed him and ran him through the door. When they landed, Batroc under Steve on top of the door, Batroc was unconscious.

“Well, this is awkward,” he heard Natasha say as he panted, but not through the com.

When Steve looked up, she was standing bent over at a computer.

“What are you doing?” he asked and dragged himself up.

“Backing up the hard drive,” Natasha replied and looked back at him. “It’s a good habit to get into.”

“Rumlow needed your help! What the hell are you doing here?” He could feel himself starting to get angry, but he knew it would be fruitless to get mad at Natasha. She’d only shrug it off and come out on top. Then he saw the screens. “You’re saving SHIELD intel.”

“Whatever I can get my hands on.”

“Our mission is to rescue hostages!”

“No, that’s your mission,” Natasha said, only looking at the screens and whatever she was doing, and then seemed to be finished as she pulled out a hard drive. “And you’ve done it beautifully.”

Steve grabbed her by the arm to stop her from walking, whirling her back around to him. “You just jeopardised this whole operation.”

“I think that’s overstating things.”

Right that moment, Batroc got up again, and Steve recognised the movements of pulling the trigger on a grenade just moments before he threw it. Steve deflected it with his shield, before he grabbed Natasha and jumped up on the control panel to jump into the adjacent room as protection from the blow. They went through the windows just as the explosion went off, landing in a heap in broken glass. They pulled themselves up to a sitting position leaning against the wall to the room they had come from. Natasha groaned, Steve looked back at the damage. He was glad they were not still in there.

“Okay,” Natasha said, panting her too. “That one's on me.”

“You’re damn right,” Steve growled and pulled himself up. She hadn’t listened to his direct order even though he was above her in command, and that had resulted in them almost getting blown up. He was getting damn tired of Fury and his double play.

~~~~~

Steve only got a few hours of sleep when they got back, before he had to be back in again in the morning. He skipped the morning jog, but only because when he had crashed asleep he had forgotten to set his alarm and therefore overslept. When he got to the Triskelion he went directly to the locker rooms and changed into his uniform. (The Captain America uniform was his SHIELD uniform, and wherever he went, people couldn’t stop staring at him. It seemed he never became old news.)

As he stalked over to Fury’s office, he was glad he’d gotten the mission report done on the flight back to the states. He didn’t wait for anyone to let him in before he stalked inside Fury’s office.

“You just can’t stop yourself from lying, can you?”

“I didn’t lie,” Fury said, still turned around in his chair, staring out of the windows. “Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours.”

“Which you didn’t feel obliged to share. “ Steve voice was hard, and he stopped when he stood right infront of Fury’s desk.

“I’m not obliged to do anything.” He still wasn’t looking at Steve.

“Those hostages could have died, Nick,” Steve said, more subdued now.

Now Fury turned around, saying, “I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Soldiers trust each other,” Steve said, feeling the harshness returning to his voice. “That’s what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around shooting guns.”

“Last time I trusted someone,” Fury said, rising out of his seat, “I lost an eye. Look, I didn’t want you doing anything you weren't comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything.”

“I can’t lead a mission,” Steve said, trying to get Fury to understand, “when the people i’m leading have missions of their own.” He had been their field commander, he needed to know that they would do what he told them to do.

“It’s called compartmentalization,” Fury said, Steve’s point obviously lost on him. “Nobody spills the secrets, because nobody knows them all.”

“Except you,” Steve said with a voice that was cool with anger.

“You’re wrong about me. I do share. I’m nice like that.”

Leading Steve out of the office, Fury went first into the elevator, saying, “Insight bay,” when he got there.

When Steve stepped in, the computer voice said, “Captain Rogers does not have clearance for Project Insight.”

“Director override. Fury, Nicholas J.”

“Confirmed,” the computer voice answered, and the doors closed.

Trying to avoid the awkward silence as the elevator ascended, Steve said, “You know, they used to play music.”

“Yeah,” Fury replied with a shuckle. “My grandfather operate one of these things for forty years. Granddad worked in a nice building. Got good tips. He’d walked home every night, a roll of ones stuffed in his lunch bag. He’d say hi. People would say hi back. Time went on, neighborhood got rougher. He'd say hi, they'd say, keep on steppin'. Granddad got to grippin' that lunch bag a little tighter.”

“Did he ever get mugged?” Steve asked.

“Every week some punk would say, what's in the bag?”

“What would he do?”

“He'd show 'em. A bunch of crumpled ones and loaded .22 Magnum. Granddad loved people. But he didn't trust them very much.”

Fury walked over from his position to stand looking out the windows of the elevator, and Steve turned around to. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. Three giant helicarriers — bigger than the helicarrier from when he first had worked for SHIELD — were docked in place in the giant space. They were loaded with any kind of weapon that could probably fit, and far from anything Steve had ever wanted to see. (He might not know how to live without a war, but that didn’t mean he wanted one.)

“Yeah, I know,” Fury said, completely misplacing Steve’s silence. “They’re a little bigger than a .22.”

As the elevator neared the ground, Steve saw them lifting over quinjets on the helicarriers, as if their existing weapons weren't enough.

“This, is Project Insight,” Fury said as he led Steve along the floor to somewhere they could watch the helicarrier more up close. “Three next-generations helicarriers synced to a network of targeting satellites.”

“Launched from the Lemurian Star,” Steve said, asking for the confirmation of what he’d put together.

“Once we get them in the air they never need to come down. Continuous suborbital flight courtesy of our new repulsor engines.”

“Stark?” Steve asked.

“Well, he had a few suggestions once he got an up close look at our old turbines,” Fury said, leading Steve up to a walkway. “These new long range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute. The satellites can read a terrorist's DNA before he steps outside his spider hole. We gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.”

“I thought the punishment usually came after the crime,” Steve said, the very idea of what Fury was saying making him frown.

“We can’t afford to wait that long.”

Who’s ‘we’?” Who had come up with this idea?

“After New York, I convinced the World Security Council we needed a quantum surge on threat analysis. For once we're way ahead of the curve.”

“By holding a gun to everyone on earth and calling it protection.” He didn’t like this, didn’t like being a part of an organisation that thought this was the right way to protect the world.

“You know, I read those SSR files,” Fury said, and now Steve turned to him. “Greatest generation? You guys did some nasty stuff.”

We had to!

“Yeah,” Steve said, feeling anger come back anew. Did he really think they wanted to? “We compromised.” (”We can’t go in there! If we do, Hydra will win, and we’ll be taken out.” “There are civilians in there! With a bomb!” We have no choice!”) “Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well.” (The smell of burning flesh, mixing with that of rotting corpses. They’d thought that it was an empty Hydra base-house, that everyone was in the main house. They’d scouted out the area. No sign of life. But there had been. And not Hydra personnel. Civilians, prisoners, children. And they had blown up the building, killing all of these innocent people.) “But we did it so people could be free.” (They didn’t have enough time. The whole village was on fire, and two houses still had people trapped. They couldn’t go into both, they were too few. They’d focused on the house with most people, getting all of them out before the building collapsed. The next moment the other building collapsed too, mixing the sound of material grinding against each other with the sound of screaming. Steve couldn’t forget it. High voices, children, mixed with crying.) “This isn’t freedom, this is fear.”

“SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we like it to be. It’s getting damned near past time to get with the program, Cap.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Steve said, his voice low and calm, the anger so prominent he couldn’t do anything else. He’d fought for people to be free, and this is what they did with that? Organisations like SHIELD had a responsibility, but they surely wasn’t following it.

He didn’t wait for Fury to answer before he walked away. He couldn’t deal with this right now. He went back in the elevator, going to the locker room floor. SHIELD owed him some time off, and it seemed they wouldn’t listen to him anyway, so why bother trying?

He changed out of the uniform and into his normal clothes in record time, strapping the shield to his back as he walked to the parking. The bike was quick to start, and he was out of the building and across the bridge before anyone could stop him.

~~~~~

He liked to visit the Smithsonian exhibit often, to see the evidence that what he remembered had really happened. Before every visit to Peggy he went there, to at least look at the parts with her. It helped him remember that she had gotten a happy life.

He walked quietly through the exhibit, looking at all the things that by now where familiar. As a few times had happened before, a small kid noticed him under the cap, and Steve raised his finger to his lips in a motion to keep quiet. The kid nodded, somewhat starstruck, and Steve smiled slightly before walking on.

He didn’t stay for long; he had a flight booked that would leave for England at 2am, and after the previous day’s long mission he needed at least a few hours of sleep. His alarm went off at midnight, at which he dragged himself out of bed and drank several cups of coffee before leaving for the airport. He managed to avoid recognition by any civilian, only recognised by the personnel checking security.

By now he was strangely used to the long flight, and slept for at least some of the nine hours it took before they landed. He’d told Peggy’s nurse he’d be there around half past five, and arrived just short of that.

She recognised him quicker this time, he noticed with relief. The last time he visited, she’d forgotten twice that he’d come back.

“You should be proud of yourself, Peggy,” he said, looking at the two pictures on her bedside table. She was smiling in them, sitting beside her two kids.

“Mm,” Peggy hummed as answer, looking over to the photographs she too. “I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.”

She was smiling at him, and after a moment he looked down. What life would he have had, with Bucky dead and Peggy with her husband?

“What is it?” Peggy asked, sensing there was something on his mind.

“For as long as I remember,” Steve said, still looking down, “I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I’m not quite sure what that is anymore. And I thought could throw myself back in, follow orders. Serve. It’s just not the same anymore.” He added a small smile to the last part, trying to make the statement not seem as serious as it was. He didn’t want Peggy to worry.

“You’re always so dramatic,” Peggy said with as much of a laugh as her lungs could handle. “Look, you saved the world. We rather … mucked it up.”

“You didn’t,” Steve said, firmly. “Knowing you helped found SHIELD is half the reason I stayed.”

“Hey,” Peggy said, reaching for his hand to take in hers. Steve could feel the involuntary frown on his face, the sad one he could never fully repress when he visited Peggy. “The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best we can do is start over.”

At the end of her sentence, a coughing fit attacked her, and Steve scrambled for a glass of water to give her.

“Peggy,” he whispered when he got back to her bed, hoping she hadn’t forgotten him again.

He recognised the look on her face immediately.

“Steve,” she said, her voice barely heard. “You’re alive. You came back.”

“Yeah, Peggy,” Steve said, smiling sadly. 

“It’s been so long,” Peggy said, tears almost in her voice, “so long.”

“Well, I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.”

He didn’t stay for long after that, having a plane back to D.C. due to leave at 8pm. By the time he was back in D.C. it was midnight, and he crashed in his bed as soon as he got back home. In moments like these he was glad he had taken the day off tomorrow.

He woke up late enough that he didn’t see Sam on his morning jog, and decided maybe he’d pay him a visit at the VA like Sam had wanted him to.

The woman at the front desk smiled dazedly at him when he he introduced himself, but directed him to where Sam was having a group session.

“The thing is,” he heard a woman say as he approached the room, “I think it’s getting worse. A cop pulled me over last week. He thought I was drunk. I swerved to miss a plastic bag. I thought it was an IED.”

Steve leaned against a pillar and listened as Sam began talking when the woman had finished.

“Some stuff you leave there, other stuff you bring back. It’s our job to figure out how to carry it. Is it gonna be in a big suitcase, or in a little man-purse? It’s up to you.”

When Sam began rounding off the meeting, Steve moved away to the side, hoping he wouldn’t get notice by any of the vets. When Sam had said the last goodbye, he walked up to Steve.

“Look who it is,” Sam said, straightening out some brochures on a table, “the running man.”

“Caught the last few minutes,” Steve said in lack of anything else to say as he leaned against the wall. “It was pretty intense.”

“Yeah, brother. We all got the same problems. Guilt, regret.”

Something about the way Sam said it… “You lose someone?” Steve asked.

“My wingman, Riley,” Sam said, more serious and subdued than Steve had gotten the impression was normal for him. “Flying a night mission. Standard PJ rescue op. Nothing we hadn’t done a 1000 times before. Until an RPG knocked Riley’s dumb ass out of the sky. Nothing I could do. It’s like I was up there just to watch.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“After that,” Sam continued, “I had a really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?”

Steve half panicked, really not wanting to answer the question it felt like it was. “But are you happy now, back in the world?” Steve asked, hoping it would make him not having to answer.

“Hey,” Sam said and smiled, “the number of people giving me orders is down to about zero, so hell yeah. Are you thinking about getting out?”

Steve couldn’t look at Sam’s smiling face when he answered, “No.” Thinking just a moment more, he shook his head and added, “I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know what I would do with myself if I did.”

“Ultimate fighting?” Sam said, his face all smile and playfulness.

Steve scoffed. He bet no one would want to fight him.

“Just a great idea off the top of my head,” Sam said, then switched back on some seriousness. “Seriously, you could do whatever you wanna do. What makes you happy?”

Steve shook his head minutely and said, “I don’t know.” He’d thought about it, again and again, but he’d never been able to find an answer. Every time he saw Bucky falling to his death, and got the stupid feeling he wasn’t allowed to be happy because he hadn’t been able to save Bucky. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t figure out what made him happy.

~~~~~

Staying out for a while, it was dark when Steve drove home. When he got up the stairs, his neighbor Kate was coming out of her apartment, talking on the phone with a basket of laundry under her arm. Despite that she said hi, and he winked a little in reply.

“My aunt,” Kate said when she’d hung up, “she’s kind of an insomniac.” They both chuckled.

Taking a breath and finally making the decision — Nat would feel so proud — he told her, “Hey, if you want … if you want, you’re welcome to use my machine. Might be cheaper than the one in the basement.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kate smiled, “What’s it cost?”

“A cup of coffee?” Steve said, starting to feel unsure. He’d never been good at talking to women, that had always been Bucky’s strong suit.

Kate smiled, but then looked down at her basket of laundry. Rejection, his dear old friend.

“Thank you, but, um,” Kate said, “I already have a load in downstairs, and you really don’t want my scrubs in your machine. I just finished a rotation in the infectious disease ward, so…”

“Well, I’ll keep my distance, Steve said, feeling awkward although this was something he was so used to.

“Hopefully not too far,”Kate said with a small smile. “Oh, and I think you left your stereo on.”

“Oh, right, thank you.” He hadn’t even played it in a long time.

He waited for Kate to disappear down the stairs before he moved to take the fire escape, climbing in through one of his windows. Whoever was in his apartment, wouldn’t expect him to come that way.

Steve recognised the song playing. He and Bucky had danced to it, after Bucky returned from basic training.

(Steve was sitting in their bedroom, on the bed, sketching Bucky smiling. It had been a little over 2 months, and Bucky hadn’t known how long he’d be gone. It took Steve a few moments before he recognised the sound of music as coming from inside the apartment. Wondering what was going on, Steve put down the sketch-book and walked out into the living room-slash-kitchen, where Bucky stood in the middle of the floor, smiling.

“Bucky,” Steve breathed out, and threw himself forward into Bucky’s embrace.

“Hey, punk,” Bucky said into his hair.

Never thought that you would be, standing here so close to me.

“Care for a dance?” Bucky asked and held out his hand.

Steve took it, swaying slowly with Bucky in the middle of their living room.

There’s so much I feel that I should say, but words can wait until some other day.

Bucky leaned down towards Steve, and sang along to the music, “Kiss me once, then kiss me twice. Then kiss me once again, it’s been a long, long time.”

Steve smiled and leaned up on his toes, meeting Bucky’s lips halfway. It was quick and sweet, before they met again, and then again.

Haven’t felt like this, my dear, since I can’t remember when.

They swayed on the floor, in each other’s arms, the whole song out. Bucky was resting his chin on top of Steve’s head, and Steve was breathing in the familiar scent of Bucky. He had missed him.)

Since the music was coming from the living room, whoever had entered was probably there too. Sneaking forward, Steve grabbed his shield on the way, and slowly looked around the corner. On the chair beside his record player, Fury was sitting, his head leaning back. Steve relaxed slightly, but also felt anger arise.

“I don’t remember giving you a key.”

Fury grunted and sat up, and said. “You really think I’d need one?” Steve would have been damned well glad if that was so, because he wanted his privacy. “My wife kicked me out,” Fury continued.

“I didn’t know you were married,” Steve said.

“A lot of things you don’t know about me.”

“I know, Nick, that’s the problem. “ Steve moved from his position leaning against the wall and went for the lightswitch. He opened his mouth in surprise when he saw how hurt Fury was. Fury, for his part, only held up a hand and turned the light back off. Doing something with his phone, Fury then turned it to show Steve: EARS EVERYWHERE.

Steve sighed and looked around his apartment. Fury had bugged it? How much of his privacy had even been private?

“I’m sorry to do this, but I had no place else to crash.” He typed something else, then showed his phone again: SHIELD COMPROMISED.

“Who else knows about your wife?” Steve asked, catching on.

“Just,” Fury said, standing up, showing the text: YOU AND ME, “my friends.”

“Is that what we are?” Steve had never considered anyone who acted to him the way Fury did a friend.

“That’s up to you.”

Then a loud sound, and Fury fell forward, hit by a bullet. A bullet that, when Steve looked, had come through the wall. Looking out the window, he saw a flash of something on the rooftop, and then dragged Fury away, hiding him behind another wall.

“Don’t … trust … anyone,” Fury said between gasps for breath, holding out his hand with something in it. Steve took the USB drive, and the next moment someone banged open his door. When he looked, he saw Kate in her scrubs, holding a gun in front of her.

“Captain Rogers?”

What was she doing in here, and what was going on?

“Captain,” she said again when she saw him looking at her. “I’m Agent 13 of SHIELD Special Service.”

“Kate?” he asked, looking at her and trying to get everything to match up.

“I’m assigned to protect you.”

“On whose orders?” How did they think he’d benefit of a bodyguard if he didn’t even know he had one? Why could SHIELD never let him know, and why couldn’t they respect his privacy?

Kate— Agent 13 walked around the corner, and stopped when she was Fury lying on the floor. “His.”

She felt for a pulse on his neck, then pulled out a walkie talkie out of the pocket on her scrubs. “Foxtrot is down, he’s unresponsive. I need EMTs.”

“Do we have a 20 on the shooter?” someone asked over the walkie talkie.

Steve looked back out the window, seeing a figure standing there on the roof, and he knew that was the source of the metal flash he’d seen earlier. The person turned around and began running, and Steve said, “Tell him I’m in pursuit.”

From across his kitchen window was a window of the building the person was on in the same height, perfect for crashing across the distance between the buildings. He landed on the shield, miraculously avoiding the shards of glass, and was up and running after the person. He could see them through the skylight, running away from Steve’s apartment. He didn’t regard any interior when he sprinted, barging through the doors to save time. At the end of the corridor was a window, through which he could see the person jump down from the roof to the one on the building opposite. Steve jumped through the window, landing on the roof with a roll back up on his feet, and threw the shield before the person could get away. The man — as Steve saw when he turned around with long hair whipping behind him — caught the shield in his left arm. A left arm that gleamed in the faint evening light, as if made of metal. It was made of metal, Steve realised.

The man, with one swift move, threw the shield back to Steve, who was pushed back several feet by the sheer force of the throw when he caught it. When he looked back up, the man was gone, not a single trace of him.

~~~~~

Natasha barged in the room in the middle of the surgery of Fury. She looked wild and untamed, even though her hair and clothes were on without a single flaw. It was all in her expression, Steve realised.

“Is he gonna make it?”

“I don’t know,” Steve asked, honest. The doctors hadn’t been able to tell yet.

“Tell me about the shooter.”

“He’s fast, strong,” Steve answered, not moving his gaze from the operation to Natasha, even though he mostly just stared without seeing. “He had a metal arm.”

Natasha seemed to need a moment to collect herself, showing her off balance in a way Steve wasn’t used to. “Ballistics?”

“Three slugs, no rifling,” Maria Hill answered. “Completely untraceable.”

“Soviet made,” Natasha said right away, as if it right now was the only thing she was sure off.

“Yeah,” Hill said, sounding surprised.

The beeping in the operation room began to flatten.

Steve was aware he should be hearing what the doctors said, but he only distantly heard Natasha chanting, “Don’t do this to me, Nick,” over and over again.

Steve turned around and walked out of the viewing room before the doctor could call time of death.

Steve silently joined Natasha when they were let in a room to say goodbye to Fury. He stood leaning against the wall, behind Nat, so she could later pretend like she hadn’t actually cried. He knew she needed it.

Maria joined them a moment later, and said, “I need to take him.”

Steve walked over to Nat when she didn’t move, quietly said, “Natasha.” She touched Fury’s head, then turned and walked out, and Steve followed her.

“Natasha,” he called after her, stopping her in her sudden stride.

“Why was Fury in your apartment?”

Steve sighed and said, “I don’t know.” And technically, he didn’t know why Fury had chosen to come to him, of all people. Why not Hill, or Nat?

“Cap, they want you back at SHIELD.”

“Yeah, give me a second,” Steve told Rumlow.

“They want you now.”

“Okay,” Steve said, forcefully calm. SHIELD could wait, and so should Rumlow.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Natasha told him when he turned back to her.

She walked away, and Steve stood there, feeling frustrated. He had to deal with Rumlow, Nat didn’t believe him, and he still had to keep the USB-drive safe. He was turning to join the Strike team when he saw the man refilling a vending machine. The USB-drive could be safe there until he could come collect it.

“Let’s go,” Steve told Rumlow when he walked back there, taking the lead. He wouldn’t let STRIKE take him in. If he was going to go back to SHIELD for questioning, like he was suspected of a crime, he was going to come walking on his own.

Something surely wasn’t as it was supposed to be, because why would the person in Rumlow’s com have said questioning and not debrief?

~~~~~

As everyone at SHIELD knew, Alexander Pierce was at the top of SHIELD. But, unless you had with the higher-ups to do, you never met him. That was why, Steve knew something was going on when they took him back to the Triskelion and sent him up to Pierce — in Fury’s office.

(Of course it wasn’t enough hurry to not have him change into the costume.)

When he got up to the right floor, Kate, Agent 13, or what her name was, was standing talking to Pierce. She began walking away when Steve approached, greeting him with a, “Captain Rogers.”

Steve wasn’t feeling all too chatty, and stared straight ahead when he said, “Neighbor.”

“Oh, Captain, I’m Alexander Pierce,” Pierce greeted and held out his hand.

“Sir, it’s an honor,” Steve said and took it. Don’t trust anyone, Fury had told him.

“The honor is mine, Captain. My father served in the 101st. Come on in.”

Steve followed him in, and stood in front of one of the armchairs at the sofa group when Pierce motioned for him — he wasn't’ going to sit until Pierce did so. A few photos were laid out on the table, and when Pierce began talking about them, Steve knew they were put there so Pierce could talk about it without it seeming forced. There was something in the story to come that he probably thought he could used to shape Steve’s thoughts about Fury.

“That photo was taken 5 years after Nick and I met, when I was at State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, ‘No, we'll negotiate.’ Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter.”

“So you gave him a promotion,” Steve said. He’d been right, Pierce was trying to shape his thoughts on Fury.

“I’ve never had any cause to regret it. Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?”

Maybe, just maybe, he could have told Natasha the truth had they been able to talk without anyone hearing, but he absolutely wasn’t going to tell Pierce anything. SHIELD compromised, Fury had told him. How could they be that without anyone at the top able to keep it from being seen? He wasn’t going to trust Pierce. “I don’t know.”

“Did you know it was bugged?”

How many had had access to the the sound from the bugs, how many had been able to invade his privacy? “I did, because Nick told me.”

“Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?”

What was true, what could he believe?

“I want you to see something,” Pierce said when Steve didn’t answer. He fiddle with a control, and a video feed of Batroc showed on a screen.

“Is that live?”

“Yeah,” Pierce answered, “they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers.”

“Are you saying he’s a suspect?” That couldn’t be, the shot, the way it had been done… “Assassination isn’t Batroc’s line.”

“No no, it’s more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech.”

“Am I supposed to know who that it?” Steve asked and took the file Pierce offered to him.

“Not likely. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick his mother lived at 14-37.”

“Are you saying Nick hired to pirates? Wy?”

“Well the prevailing theory,” Pierce answered, “was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death.”

“If you really know Nick Fury you’d know that’s not true.” He refused to believe Fury would have done that. Sure, they didn’t always agree, certainly not on Project Insight, but that wasn’t something he could see Fury being capable of doing.

“Why do you think we’re talking?” Pierce asked and stood up. Steve stood up too, more on edge no. Something about it… Steve thought Pierce was shaping and changing this conversation after Steve’s reactions, to try and make him believe all was well.

“See,” Pierce continued, “I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry.”

Pierce fell silent for a moment, just looking at Steve, before he continued again. “Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?”

He didn’t trust Pierce, and he wasn’t going to tell him anything. “He told me not to trust anyone.”

“I wonder, if that included him.”

Pierce was definitely trying to change the way Steve thought about Fury. Why he wanted to do that, on the other hand, Steve didn’t know. Fury was dead now, so what did it matter to Pierce what Steve thought about him? “I’m sorry, those were his last words. Excuse me.”

Steve picked his shield back up and made his way to the door.

“Captain,” Pierce said before he could get all the way there. “Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone.”

“Understood,” Steve said and left the office.

He made his way to the elevator, and stood staring out the windows when Rumlow and two other STRIKE members stepped in. Steve ignored them, hoping they’d ignore him.

“Cap,” Rumlow said, as greeting. No such luck then.

“Rumlow,” Steve greeted back and turned so he had his back to the windows.

“Evidence response found some fibers on the roof they want us to see. You want me to get the tac-team ready?”

“No,” Steve said, “let’s wait and see what it is first.”

“Right.”

The elevator fell quiet as the descended. Steve stared down at the floor, standing still, but the agents were shifting. One of them had a hand on their weapon. Were they going to…

The elevator stopped and the door opened, and four more men stepped in. Steve moved to not be pressed up against the wall, and ended up right behind Rumlow.

“Sorry about what happened to Fury,” he said. “It’s messed up, what happened to him.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, even though he wasn’t sure Rumlow was being sincere.

Right before the elevator stopped again, Steve notice some of the agents sweating. It wasn’t particularly hot in the elevator.

When the doors opened and Rollins and two other STRIKE members entered the elevator, Steve knew something was about to happen.

“Before we get started,” Steve said when the elevator had begun descending again, “does anyone want to get out?” He wanted to get out, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Rollins spun around, going for Steve with an electric rod. Steve managed to dodge, but in doing so stepped right into some of the other agents who grabbed him and held him in a choking hold. Others came at him with magnetic cuffs, one that they managed to strap onto his wrist, but the other was flung away when Steve thought back. He managed to knock down several agents, and came free, but the magnetic cuff got stuck on the wall. As he tried to wring his wrist free, Rumlow came from behind and put an electric rod against Steve’s back. Steve managed to knock him away, doing the same with the agents that came after. It gave him enough time to force his wrist free, land on the floor and knock out two more agents before Rumlow got back on his feet.

“Whoa, big guy,” Rumlow said, holding up both hands with electric rods in them. “I just want you to know, Cap, this ain’t personal.”

Rumlow got under Steve’s guard enough to taser him twice before Steve could grab him and throw him up in the ceiling. When he fell to the floor he was unconscious.

“It kinda feels personal,” Steve said, stomped on the edge of his shield so it swung up from the floor, and used that to knock away the cuff still on his wrist.

He pushed the button to open the door, and was confronted with a tac-team in full armor, guns trained on him.

“Drop the shield! Put your hands in the air!”

Instead of doing as they told him, he spun around with the shield and cut the wires, getting the elevator to fall down without control. Some sort of fail-safe got the elevator still after a decent fall, halfway between floors. Steve forced the top doors opened, but was faced with another tac-team coming running for him. He hurriedly closed the doors again and turned to look out the windows. It wasn’t too far down to the glass roof of the entrance hall, and even though that was high to the ceiling, he should be able to managed the fall.

“Give it up, Rogers! Get that door opened! You have nowhere to go!”

Steve ran for the window, breaking the glass with his shield and as good as he could curled up in a ball on top of the shield during the fall. The crash was slightly worse than he’d thought, but the shield took the worst of it, even if it left Steve feeling battered. He forced himself up, even though every part of him screamed to stay down, and ran for the garage. If he could just get there and out on the bridge in time, he should be okay.

He did managed to get out on the bridge, narrowly jumping through the closing gates, but he hadn’t anticipated the quinjet that ambushed him halfway over the bridge. He heard about the traps that could be put up, and had counted them in, thought he could get past.

An armoured and armed quinjet might be slightly harder, though.

“Stand down, Captain Rogers. Stand down.”

He’d done well driving a bike during the war, he could dodge a quinjet shooting at him.

“Repeat, stand down.”

He did manage to dodge. When he got close enough, he threw the shield, and it lodged itself in the right engine. When he got even closer, he jumped up on the quinjet, grabbing the shield and using it wo hold himself steady when the plane spun around, and then threw it to knock out the other engine too. When he was certain it wouldn’t be able to fly anymore, he jumped down and landed on the bridge, just past the traps. The bike was too far away, possibly even destroyed, so he ran.

Before going back to the hospital to retrieve the USB-drive, he stopped by a gym, left the costume in a gym bag and put on more discreet clothes.

(Possibly even leaving behind trackers, because knowing what SHIELD had turned out to do so far, he wouldn't put it behind them.)

No one stopped im at the hospital and he easily walked up to the vending machine to get the USB-drive. Only, it wasn’t there. He’d only been there a few seconds when Natasha appeared behind him, chewing pink gum, which he was sure he’d hid the drive behind. He turned around slowly, but quickly grabbed her and pushed her into an empty room and up against its wall.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

“Safe.”

“Do better!” he snarled, trying to intimidate her.

“Where did you get it?” she said instead, as if she wasn’t the least affected by him.

“Why would I tell you?”

“Fury gave it to you,” Natasha concluded. “Why?”

“What’s on it?” Surely she’d know — she was the one to get it — and if she didn’t, she would have figured it out by now.

“I don’t know.”

“Stop lying!” Steve snapped, pushing down the urge to grab her harder, shake her to get her to answer.

“I only act like I know everything, Rogers.”

“I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn’t you?”

Natasha looked genuinely surprised before she said, “Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you.”

“I’m not gonna ask again!” Steve finally lost his temper, but managed to not hurl her across the room.

Natasha looked almost frightened when she said, “I know who killed Fury.”

It got Steve to stop, to let up on his grip on her.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists, the ones that do calls him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“So he’s a ghost story.” There was no way one guy could have managed that.

“Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot at my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me.” She lifted the em of her shirt to show a scar, ugly in the way big scars always were. “A Soviet slag, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis.”

“Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now,” Steve deadpanned, and it managed to get half a smile out of her.

“Going after him is a dead end. I know, I’ve tried.” She held up the drive. “Like you said, he’s a ghost story.”

Steve grabbed the drive out of her hand. “Well, let’s find out what the ghost wants.”

~~~~~

Natasha dragged him away to the mall, with the first stop at a clothing store. She picked out the clothes - "I don't trust you with this." - and then they bought new shoes before going to the toilets to change. When Steve emerge, Natasha was already done, and was waiting for him.

"Next stop os Apple," she said, and Steve was confused for a moment before remembering the brand.

His new clothes weren't exactly comfortable - "We don't have time to find clothes that fits perfectly." - but the shoes were worse. He wanted to run, and kept looking over his shoulder like agents sas just going to appear behind them. They probably didn't even know where Steve and Natasha was here.

"First rule of going on the run os, don't run, walk," Natasha scolded him, having noticed his frantic search of their surroundings. "Try not to look like you're running away from something, and no one will look twice at you."

"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve countered, wishing she could have picked out a pair that would stay on his feet at least.

Natasha picked out one of the computers when they got there, and Steve set himself the task to look out for an SHIELD agents. He wouldn’t be of much help to Natasha any other way, so he did what he knew he could do.

“The drive has a level six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are.”

“How much time do we have?” Steve asked.

“Uh… about nine minutes from,” she popped the drive into the computer, “now.”

She started typing on the keyboard, and windows popped up and disappeared on the screen. “The drive has a level six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are.”

“Can you override it?” Steve asked, looking over her shoulder.

“The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly.” She sounded annoyed at the fact, at having to admit it, but kept typing in vigor. “I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from.”

“Can I help you guys with anything?” Steve looked up to see an employee with very long hair and beard, smiling brightly.

Natasha answered him before Steve even had time to react. “Oh, no,” she said, and laid an arm around Steve’s shoulder, hugging him to her. “My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations.”

“Right,” Steve said to play along, slightly dazed from how quickly Natasha had reacted. “We’re getting married.”

“Congratulations,” he said. “Where are you guys thinking about going?”

Steve looked at the screen, and saw the signal had narrowed down to New Jersey. “New Jersey,” he said, fighting hard not to cringe at the mere fact of saying it.

When he looked back at the guy, he had his mouth slightly open in recognition, the way people had always done before they exclaimed “Captain America!”. This guy couldn’t do that, or their cover would be completely blown.

“I have the exact same glasses,2 the guy said though, a Steve breathed out in relief.

“Wow, you two are practically twins,” Natasha said behind Steve, still typing away on the computer.

“Yeah, I wish,” the guy chuckled, and then made a waving motion with both hands in front of Steve, “Specimen. If you guys need anything, I’ve been Aaron.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, and then Aaron walked away to help someone else.

Steve turned back to Natasha, who was still trying to get an exact location. “You said nine minutes, come on.” They were running out of time.

“Relax,” Natasha said, dragging out the word. Then, “Got it.”

The screen zoomed in, and told them Wheaton, NJ. Steve leaned in closer to the screen. He knew that place, the one time he’d been in New Jersey.

“You know it?” Natasha asked.

“I used to,” he answered and pulled out the drive. “Let’s go.”

When they got out of the store, Steve could see that SHIELD had already gotten there. “Standard tac team,” he told Natasha. “Two behind, two across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro.”

“Shut up and put your arm around him,” Natasha said quickly. “Laugh at something I said.”

“What?” What help would that be?

“Do it.” Her voice was so demanding that he did what she said, without really thinking about it. The SHIELD agents walked right past them.

The safely got to the escalators and took the one going down, if they could just get out of the mall unseen, the worst of the danger would be over. Only, as they were halfway down, Steve noticed Rumlow in the escalator next to them, going up.

Natasha must have noticed him too, because she turned around to Steve and said, “Kiss me.”

“What?” Was she out of her mind? Why, in this situation, would they… he didn’t even think she was interested, surely she and Clint—

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

Oh! Maybe that could work as a plan. “Yes, they do.”

She pulled Steve down and kissed him, just soft lips lightly pressed together — better than the ones his dates had forced on him, even though this could barely be counted as a kiss — and Steve kept an eye one Rumlow from under the screen of his cap. Rumlow didn’t even look at them.

When he had disappeared and the danger was over, Natasha pulled away and walked the rest of the bit down, asking, “You still uncomfortable?” when Steve followed her down.

“It’s not exactly the word I would use.” He’d been more uncomfortable with his dates, and sure, the kiss was more than his relation to Natasha made natural, and he still missed Bucky, but the kiss had somehow let him know he was a person. It had reminded him he was Steve.

~~~~~

Out on the parking lot, the quickly looked for a car that was unlocked. Natasha found one first, and Steve jumped in behind the wheel. Natasha made herself comfortable in the passenger seat while Steve worked on hotwiring the car to get the engine started. It didn’t take him long, and within short, the were on the road to New Jersey.

First when they passed a sign saying Welcome to New Jersey, the garden state, did Natasha speak.

“Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?”

“Nazi Germany.” They’d needed cars for some mission gone wrong, or just a quick escape, and all they found were left alone, abandoned.

“Hmm,” Natasha hummed as the only response.

“And we’re borrowing,” Steve added, “take your feet off the dash.”

She looked at him for a moment before taking her feet down. “All right, I have a question for you,” she said, “of which you do not have to answer. But i feel like if you don’t answer it though, you’re kind of answering it, you know?”

“What?” Steve asked, maybe slightly too forceful, to get her to say it.

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?”

Steve could see her smiling in the corner of his eye, but he kept his eyes on the road. “That bad, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, it kind of sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said, sounding almost bad, “I just wondered how much practice you’ve had.”

“You don’t need practice.”

“Everybody needs practice.”

“It was not my first kiss since 1945,” Steve said, just to shut her up. “I’m 95, I’m not dead.” Plus, all dates she’d set up for him, how could he possibly have avoided it?

“Nobody special, though?”

“Believe it or not,” Steve scoffed, ”it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience.” and God, he still missed Bucky, even after 2 years had gone by.

“Well, that’s alright,” Natasha said, casually, “just make something up.”

“What, like you?” Steve asked. He couldn’t understand how she could live like she did, telling lies about herself to get to know people.

“I don't know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I.”

“That’s a tough way to live.” He was certain he couldn’t do it.

“It's a good way not to die, though.” Her voice had he certain hint of seriousness to it.

“You know,” Steve said, looking over at her, “it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is.”

“Yeah,” she answered, more subdued, and a serious look on her face. “Who do you want me to be?”

“How about a friend,” he answered without hesitation. So many people he wasn’t certain why they wanted to spend time with him, if they really were interested in getting to know Steve Rogers just to be a friend. With Natasha, he didn’t have to worry about that.

“Well,” she laughed softly, “there’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”

They fell back into silence, and Steve drove them down an increasingly familiar road. When he parked the car outside the gates, he felt like he had been thrown back in time. Sure, Camp Leigh was far from how it had looked back then, it was overgrown now, but the feelings were still there, like they had there own presence.

They got out of the car, Natasha with her little device to track to signal. She didn’t look at him when he broke open the chain to open the gate. It was dark in the evening, but Steve could still outline the buildings, see the track they ran every day. He remembered their drill sergeant, yelling at them to pick up their pace, yelling at Steve to fall in with the rest.

All too soon, Natasha pocketed the device with a sigh. “This is a dead end,” she said and Steve turned to her. “Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off.”

She was just about to head back to the car when Steve saw the building. He stalked over, and Natasha fell in beside him with only a, “What?”

“Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards from the barracks. This building is in the wrong place.”

The small lock on the door wasn’t hard to break with the shield, and the door opened relatively easy. Natasha flipped the switch to the light, suddenly bathing the room in brightness. When Steve’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could see a SHIELDmark on the wall of what looked like an office. Why would SHIELD have an office in an old army camp? They looked around the place, but couldn’t find anywhere the signal could have come from, until Steve found the elevator behind the bookshelf. Natasha used her device to scan for the code, smiling triumphantly when the doors open with a ding.

It took them down to another large room, and in the darkness Steve only saw a few old screens. When the light switched on from their movement, he could see feet after feet of computers stretch out further than he’d first thought the room was big.

“This can’t be the datapoint,” Natasha said, sounding uncharacteristically confused. “This technology is ancient.”

Steve was inclined to agree with heeer, but the he saw the drive port, looking shiny and new on the dusty table. Natasha inserted the drive, and immediately the computers began whirring to life. On one of the screens, a message blinked to life as an electronic voice said it, “Initiate system?”

“Y-E-S,” Natasha said as she typed it out, “spells yes.”

A camera above the screen moved, first from Steve then over to Natasha. The electronic voice said, “Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984.”

“It’s some kind of recording,” Natasha said, as if reassuring herself.

Steve recognized that voice.

“I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am.” On the screen, a picture of Zola showed. This couldn’t be, he was dead.

“Arnim Zola was a german scientist,” Steve said and began walking around behind the screen, “who worked for the Red Skull. He experimented on the prisoners they took, he was trying to recreate the serum. He’d been dead for years.”

“First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain.”

But this was SHIELD, and they would never let this happen. “How did you get here?” Steve growled.

“It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic values.” She was looking at him with an unreadable look, but Steve could imagine her gauging hs reaction to SHIELD doing something like that.

“They wouldn’t do that, not you, not after what you’d done.”

“They thought I could help their cause, but i also helped my own.”

No, that was impossible. The Red Skull was dead, HYDRa had been disbanded, destroyed. “HYDRA died, I made sure of that.”

“Cut of one head, two more shall ride in it’s place. HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.” The screens began showing footage, of the Red Skull, of the HYDRA army. “What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much.” The screens switched to footage of the Howling Commandos, of Captain America fighting HYDRA. Steve felt sick. “Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD.” Pictures of Howard and Peggy, of Zola amongst SHIELD. “For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war.” Pictures of wars, of terrorism and revolutions, of uprisings and mass murders. “And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.” The photos were blurry of someone that looked like Fury’s assassin.

“That’s impossible,” Natasha protested. “SHIELD would have stopped you.”

“Accidents will happen.” Newspaper articles of Howard’s death, Fury’s file stamped with deceased. “HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero sum.”

Steve couldn’t look anymore, couldn’t see the helicarriers or the articles of his own death. It was making him so frustrated, knowing he had died for nothing, that Bucky had died for nothing. Another screen blinked awake with the blurry, green image of Zola after Steve punched the first.

“As I was saying... Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind of algorithm?” Natasha asked.

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.”

Enforced doors were closing at the elevator, and Natasha’s device beeped an incoming bogey. They had thirty seconds to get out, and Steve couldn’t think because all he he could hear was SHIELD fired it.

“Admit it is better this way. We are both of us, out of time.” He’d come to that conclusion a long time ago, but no one had let him keep it. It was better this way for him, but Natasha didn’t deserve this.

It was only that thought that saved them, that gave Steve enough clarity to hide himself and Natasha under his shield, and then get them both away from there before SHIELD could get to the site. He was exhausted, but he buckled Natasha in the passenger seat and drove, going back to DC.

~~~~~

Natasha had regained conscious by the time they got to DC, and by then, Steve’s only plan was Sam. He hated to have to drag him in, though.

“Hey, man,” Sam said when he opened his door, sounding much calmer than Steve would have thought being faced with two dirty and roughed up SHIELD agents.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, having completely forgotten anything he had planned to say. “I… I don’t want to—” He took a deep breath and started over. “We need a place to lay low.”

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” Natasha supplied helpfully.

“Not everyone,” Sam said and let them in.

Steve let Natasha use the shower first, and told Sam about what had happened while she was in there. Steve washed off quickly when Natasha was done, and when he merged from the bathroom she was still sitting on Sam’s bed drying her hair.

“When I first joined SHIELD, I thought it was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but...I guess I can't tell the difference anymore.”

“No one knew,” Steve reassured her. “HYDRA had us all fooled. It’s not your fault.”

“I know that.” She sighed and laid the towel beside her. “I owe you.”

“I dragged you into it.”

“You didn’t, I did it myself.” She sighed again and picked at a loose thread on the towel. “If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life, and you be honest with me, would you trust me to do it?”

“I would now,” Steve replied honestly, putting a hand on hers. “And I’m always honest.”

“Well, you seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing.” She was deflating, pushing the previous subject back where it couldn’t be found.

“I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting.” It was true to some extent. He was too exhausted by all this to let it show, thought it was easier to just pretend it didn’t bother him. The people who had tortured and led Bucky to his death, was the people Steve had worked with for years, trusted. Had anyone he worked with at SHIELD been actual SHIELD agents, or had they all been HYDRA in hiding?

Sam turned up in the doorway, leaning against it, and said, “I made breakfast.”

Steve hadn’t even realised the evening had turned into night and then into morning. How long had he been awake?

~~~~~

They talked over breakfast, found Pierce must have been behind it, and that Jasper Sitwell had been on the Lemurian Star with thee algorithm.

“So, the real question is,” Steve said, “how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?”

This got Sam engaged. He went to retrieve something, and put a file on the table in front of Steve. Clipped to the front was a picture, with Sam and another man dressed in full gear.

“The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you,” Natasha commented, but Steve didn’t pay much attention. Instead he turned the picture to Sam and asked, “Is this Riley?” and got a nod as answer.

“I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?”

“No,” Sam told Natasha and opened the file. “These.”

Inside was detailed information on EXO-7 FALCON, along with pictures of Sam and Riley wearing … wings.

“I thought you said pilot,” Steve said and looked up at Sam.

Sam shuckled and shook his head. “I never said pilot.”

“I can't ask you to do this, Sam,” Steve said and put the file down. He wasn’t gonna drag Sam into this mess, too. “You got out for a good reason.”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in.”

“Where can we find one of these?” Natasha asked and picked up the file.

“The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall.”

Steve shared a look with Natasha who only shrugged. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

~~~~~

Turned out, she was right. It was like a walk in the park. Now they only had to get Sitwell.

~~~~~

They made a plan, where Sam was going to call Sitwell and threaten him to come with him, and from there Steve and Natasha would take him up on a floor. It worked as they’d planned, and Sitwell seemed thoroughly intimidated when Steve stalked towards him and asked about Zola’s algorithm. Only he tried to fool them he didn’t know about it.

Steve gripped Sitwell’s suit when was at the edge of the roof, but Sitwell only seemed to get more confident when Steve leaned him over the edge.

“Is this supposed to insinuate you're going to throw me off the roof? It’s really not your style, Rogers.”

Steve smiled. “You’re right. It’s hers.”

Steve watched him fall, and shook his head when Natasha tried to set him up again. “I’m not ready for that.”

The screaming got louder again, and the next moment Sam threw Sitwell back on the roof, before landing himself, the wings folding in behind him.

“Zola's algorithm is a program,” Sitwell said, gasping for breath as he held up a hand in surrender, “for choosing Insight's targets! You! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to HYDRA! Now, or in the future.”

“The Future?” Steve asked. “How could it know?”

“How could it not?” Sitwell laughed, an almost maniacal sound. “The 21st century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola's algorithm evaluates people's' past to predict their future.”

They were on the road quickly after, driving for the Triskelion. They formed a plan as they drove, feeling the hurry of the 16 hours they had. With Sitwell they would get past the DNA scans, and from there disable the helicarriers. If any one part of the plan went wrong, millions of people would be in danger.

They were on the highway, not too far from the Triskelion, when something thumped down onto their roof. A hand was punched in through the window, grabbed Sitwell and launched him into the oncoming traffic. Natasha jumped into the front seat when a gun was fired through the roof. Steve pulled the brake handle and the person was thrown to the ground. Steve stared as the person landed, dug his metal fingers into the ground to stop the movement and then stood up. Before they could react, a car rushed into them from behind and Natasha dropped her gun. The Winter Soldier jumped back on the roof, and after only a moment pulled the steering wheel straight out of Sam’s hands. They had absolutely no control over the car, but before it spun out of control they had to get out. Steve grabbed onto Sam and Natasha, and punched the door away from it’s hinges. They landed relatively safely seeing how the situation was.

The Winter Soldier fired a rifle at Steve and Natasha, which Steve took to the shield after pushing Natasha out of the way. The force was hard enough that he hurled back over the edge, and landed in a bus that crashed.

Steve got on his feet, suddenly in a hurry to get out when the bus was under fire. His shield had landed a few feet away, and he curled behind it as protection against the bullets. Sam helped him from above, and seeing that he had the situation under control, Steve ran to find the Winter Soldier. Just in time, Steve got to him before he could shoot Natasha. He wouldn’t have a chance against bullets, not in these clothes and a fight two-on-two, so he prioritised getting The winter Soldier to let go of his guns.

In the midst of it, the soldier got Steve’s shield, and before Steve could get it back, the soldier was attacking him with a knife. Steve dodge, thinking the fight to be easy, and almost took a cut to his arm. The soldier was a match in fighting abilities to Steve. Steve got the upper hand for a moment, but then the soldier had him in a lock with only the metal arm around Steve’s throat. Steve just managed to get out of it, landing close enough to pick his shield back up. With the shield Steve had the upper hand, and spun the soldier around. He caught himself in the fall, and when he landed, the mask had fallen off.

“Bucky?”

He looked like Bucky, but with longer hair. Surely it couldn’t be, he had thought the other man was Bucky, and been wrong.

The soldier turned around. Bucky stared back at him, his eyes lacking any recognition. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Steve saw him raising the gun, but he couldn’t move. He was saved by Sam coming flying and knocking Bucky over, then again by Natasha firing one of the rifles. When Steve looked back, Bucky was gone.

Then SHIELD was there surrounding them, with Rumlow in the lead, shouting, “Drop the shield, Captain! On your knees!”

Steve couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t fight back. Rumlow led him to a van, where he was placed with Natasha, Sam and two guards.

The guards mostly ignored them, but Steve still sat staring down at floor. Bucky had been there, it had really been him.

"You okay, man?" Sam asked.

"It was Bucky," Steve replied. "He looked right at me, and he didn't recognise me. He didn't even know his own name. It's been almost 70 years, how can he be alive?"

"He must have ... survived the fall," Sam said, gently. "When Zola had him- All the books talk about how he got a version of the serum."

"I should have looked for him," Steve said, despaired. "I knew he had a version of the serum, I shouldn't have assumed he died, I should have-"

"None of this is your fault, Steve," Natasha interrupted him.

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. I should have looked for him, if so only to give him a proper burial."

He fell silent, and only looked at Natasha with worry when Sam told the guards she needed a doctor. Steve hadn't noticed the wound until now.

When the guard raised their electrical rod, Steve tensed, ready to fight back. His body forgot to keep the fight stance when the guard instead tasered the other guard.

"Hill," Steve said, a light gasp in his voice, when she pulled off her helmet.

Hill got them out of the van and then took them to a location out in the woods. They entered a building at the side of a hydroelectric power plant, where a man met them to take care of Natasha.

"She'll want to meet him first," Hill said and led them further down the corridor.

"You're alive." Steve couldn't keep the accusation out of his voice when he laid eyes on Fury, not after he saw the hurt flash over Natasha's face.

"Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful," Fury said. "They can't kill you if you're already dead."

"How?" Natasha's voice was clipped, but she kept any emotions off her face.

"Tetrodotoxin B," Fury answered. "Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

"Why didn't you just tell us?" Steve asked.

"I wasn't sure who to trust."

"That's always the problem with you, isn't it?" Steve growled. He stormed away before he could do anything drastic.

~~~~~

Steve walked back later when he had calmed down. By then Natasha's shoulder was looked at by a doctor, and Fury had sat up in front of a table with a case lying on the top.

"We have to find a way to stop the carriers," Natasha said the moment Steve stepped up to them.

Hill opened the case to show three chips. "We'll use these to stop them. When the reach 3000 feet they will connect and go fully weaponised. These chips will replace the targeting system. For it to work, we need to change all three. If even one is left, many people will die."

"Assume everyone on the carriers are Hydra," Fury said. "If we can fix the targeting system, maybe we can salvage what's left-"

"You said it yourself, SHIELD's been compromised. It all goes. Hydra grew right under your nose and you didn't even notice."

"I noticed."

"Not quick enough," Steve said, frustrated. "How many paid the price before you did?"

"I didn't know about Barnes."

"Would you have told me if you did?" Steve asked, already knowing the answer would have been no.

"Steve is right, we have to take down SHIELD too," Hill said.

Fury looked at Sam - who said, "I do what he does only slower." - and Natasha and then sighed. "Fine. Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain."

Steve walked out later, stood on top of the hydroelectric power plant and looked out over the water. Sam joined him after a moment.

"He will be there," Sam said. "Whoever he was, he's not the same anymore. I don't think he's the type you save, I think he's the type you stop."

"I won't be able to do that, Sam." Steve kept staring out over the water, but he could feel Sam's eyes on him. "He- I- I won't be able to do it."

"He might not give you a choice, Steve," Sam said softly.

"He has to, I can't-" His voice broke, and he buried his face in his hands to hide his tears. "I love him, I can't stop him."

"We'll be right there with you, Steve," Sam said, "we'll help."

"I don't think I can let you do it either," Steve said and turned to Sam.

"Shit," Sam said and then fell quiet.

"It's time to go, gear up," Steve said after a moment's silence.

"You gonna wear that?" Sam asked, teasing in his voice.

Steve silently shook his head, and walked back to the house.

~~~~~

Hill said they were close enough to New York that it wasn't too far out of the way to get the replica of his old uniform from the Smithsonian. Steve didn't exactly need to fight in it, but if the reason Bucky hadn't recognised Steve was because he didn't remember, maybe the uniform could jog his memories.

Hill helped them get into the Triskelion, surprisingly without being discovered. With her help they arrived up at the communications room, and lured an agent to open the door.

"Attention, all SHIELD agents," Steve said into the mic to the overall sound system. "This is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days, some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was, it's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well. I don't know how many more, but I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. They shot Nick Fury and it won't end there. If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high, it always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not."

"Did you write that down first, or was it off the top of your head?"

Steve allowed himself to smile and said, "I usually just improvise."

After they went separate ways, Hill up to Project insight's commando bridge, and Sam and Steve towards the helicarriers. Natasha was already under cover to intercept Pierce.

"How do we know the good guys from the bad," Sam asked Steve as they ran, the wings out in preparation.

"If they're shooting at you they're bad."

Steve fought his way to the first carrier, with Hill reminding him they only had 8 minutes, and replaced the chip. Easy enough. Though he knew the other wasn't going to be as much of a walk in the park.

"Alpha locked," Steve let Hill know and made his way out.

He heard Sam say, "Bravo locked." Two down then.

The last helicarrier had already lifted, too far up for Steve to reach. "Mind giving me a ride, Sam?"

Sam put Steve down on the helicarrier, but right there was Bucky, kicking Steve over the edge. He managed to grab hold with his shield, having to grip hard not to fall down. He managed to crawl up, and fought his way inside to replace the chip.

6 minutes.

Bucky was waiting for him inside.

"I can't just let people die, Bucky."

Bucky stared at him, the lack of emotions on his face far colder than it ever was on Natasha.

"Please don't make me do this, Bucky," Steve pleaded.

When Bucky didn't back down, Steve threw his shield at him. He didn't want to do it, but he didn't really have a choice, did he?

Bucky got a gun into his hand, shoot at Steve, but he was quick and too close for the gun to give any advantage. Bucky threw it away in favour of grappling at Steve. Steve socked him in the jaw, far more lightly than he would have an enemy. He got a grip on Bucky and pushed him over the edge. The fall wasn't high enough to seriously hurt him, Steve knew, so Steve hurried forward to change the chip.

He had removed Hydra's chip, and had the new one in his hand to change, when Bucky rammed straight into him. The chip slipped from Steve's gripped, but stopped before it could fall all the way down.

Steve ducked down and slid after the chip. He got ahold of it, but Bucky was right behind him, and suddenly a knife was lodged in Steve's shoulder.

While Steve breathed and began pulling the knife out, Bucky had taken the chip and jumped down to the lower level. Steve dropped the knife and followed.

He got Bucky in a headlock, his right arm twisted back in a way that had to be painful.

"Drop the chip, Bucky,' Steve demanded. "I don't want to hurt you."

A moment later and Steve felt Bucky go lax in his arm. Steve picked up the chip and ran to change it. Unfortunately, Bucky regained control all too quickly and shot at Steve. By some miracle he missed, and Steve managed to climb back up.

"Time's running out,Cap!"

"I'm on it, Hill."

Just as he was about to place the chip in the targeting system, a white-hot feeling exploded in his abdomen. Bucky had hit him after all.

Steve crumbled to the floor, but forced himself to get up. He had to fix this. He barely did, but he managed to reach up to insert the chip.

"Charlie locked," he panted into the com.

"Good, now get out," Hill replied.

They had talked about this part of the plan, how the new targeting chips would target only the three helicarriers. That meant they had to be quick getting out.

"Fire now!" He had known this would happen when the time was running short. The higher up the helicarriers could get, the bigger the damaged would be when they fell. Hill had to fire now. "Do it!"

Steve could feel hesitation in Hill's silence, but the the shots rang out, followed by explosions when the carriers began falling apart.

Not many seconds had gone by when Steve managed to stand up and could look down. Bucky was trapped under a beam, with a look so full of pure terror as he thought to get out, that it broke Steve's heart.

Steve was there in a matter of seconds, pushing the beam up so Bucky could get away.

"You know me, Buck," Steve tried when Bucky stood up. "You've known me practically your whole life."

"No I don't!" Bucky yelled and lashed at Steve.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," Steve gasped out between punches. He wasn't fighting back now, because what was the use? He'd completed his mission, and he wasn't going to fight Bucky.

Steve took a step back when Bucky momentarily paused, and removed his helmet. It let it fall to the ground, and then dropped his shield down through a crack in the glass. "I won't fight you. I love you, Bucky, and I can't hurt you."

Bucky charged into Steve, knocking him over, just to keep punching Steve in the face. "You're my mission!"

"I don't care," Steve said, his voice far weaker than he liked. "Because I'm with you til the end of the line, and it ain't here yet."

Steve's eyes had swollen almost completely shut from the punches, but he could see Bucky hesitate, like maybe he could remember something.

But before Steve could say any more, he was falling helplessly through the air, watching Bucky grow smaller and smaller before Steve hit the water. Would he actually drown this time around?

~~~~~

When Steve had come around it had been to the soft sound of music playing, and Sam waiting at his hospital bed.

When he was discharged, he'd had one thing, and one thing only on his mind. He had to find Bucky. Therefore he declined coming with Fury to Europe, even if it was tempting to help whiping out Hydra bases.

But as he told Fury, he had something to do first.

"Be careful," Natasha told him when she handed over the Winter Soldier file.

"I will." He had a reason to stay safe, and he would have Sam there right by his side helping him.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be updated as beta work is done.
> 
> Art to this fic is made by [naomilasenby](http://naomilasenby.tumblr.com/) and you can find it [here on tumblr](http://naomilasenby.tumblr.com/post/149595926184/this-is-my-artwork-for-the-stucky-big-bang-story).
> 
> You can find me on tumblr: [jennypigalle](http://jennypigalle.tumblr.com) and [pigalleonwattpad](http://pigalleonwattpad.tumblr.com).


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